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Jason, et al --

...and then Jason Helfman said...
% What are some opinions of some good keyservers out there?

I have wwwkeys.us.pgp.net in my GPG options file, and it usually works.
I've been to Baal's MIT keyserver in the past, but it seems to be down
now; I also tried certserver.pgp.com with the same [lack of] results the
other day. I recently hit pgpkeys.mit.edu and found the key for which I
was hunting, so I'm happy with that.

I'm interested in the answers as well; I suspect that there may be "good"
and "not so good" keyservers, but also "near" and "far" keyservers that
might be considered. I dunno if "all keyservers" talk to each other or
if there are multiple key databases that are shared amongst a subset of
servers, either.

I'm on the mutt-users list but not the gnupg-users list, so please copy
[at least] me on any answers not going to m-u.


% --
% /Jason G Helfman
%
% "At any given moment, you may find the ticket to the circus that has always
% been in your possession."
%
% Fingerprint: 6A32 3774 E390 33B5 8C96 2AA1 2BF4 BD71 35A1 C149
% GnuPG http://www.gnupg.org Get Private! 1024D/35A1C149


:-D
--
David T-G * It's easier to fight for one's principles
(play) davidtg@bigfoot.com * than to live up to them. -- fortune cookie
(work) davidtgwork@bigfoot.com
http://www.bigfoot.com/~davidtg/ Shpx gur Pbzzhavpngvbaf Qrprapl Npg!
The "new millennium" starts at the beginning of 2001. There was no year 0.
Note: If bigfoot.com gives you fits, try sector13.org in its place. *sigh*

David T-G, at 14:31 -0400 on Tue, 22 Aug 2000, wrote:

> ...and then Jason Helfman said...
> % What are some opinions of some good keyservers out there?

I personally horowitz.surfnet.nl.

I have found http://openpgp.net/pgpsrv.html to be a good listing of
servers.

--
Frank Tobin http://www.uiuc.edu/~ftobin/

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On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, David T-G wrote:

> I have wwwkeys.us.pgp.net in my GPG options file, and it usually works.

Please forgive my ignorance here. I installed gnupg yesterday and have my
key, etc., etc. But what do you mean by "gpg options file". Where is
this file? And what does having a keyserver in the file provide?

Thanks,
Bryan Walton

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Submitted 22 Aug, 2000 by David T-G:

> might be considered. I dunno if "all keyservers" talk to each other or
> if there are multiple key databases that are shared amongst a subset of
> servers, either.

I would tend to suspect the latter. As far as I can tell, there are at
least two distinct types of keyservers: pgp.net and keyserver.net.
There are, in fact, keys that are available via one of them but not the
other.

--
Anton Graham GPG ID: 0x18F78541
<darkimage@bigfoot.com> RSA key available upon request

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
-- David Bowie

According to Bryan K. Walton:
> On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, David T-G wrote:
>
> > I have wwwkeys.us.pgp.net in my GPG options file, and it usually works.
>
> Please forgive my ignorance here. I installed gnupg yesterday and have my
> key, etc., etc. But what do you mean by "gpg options file". Where is
> this file?

The 'options' file just allows one to specify default values to
various gpg options and hence save us the trouble of typing them each
time we use the software. The file resides in ~/.gnupg. See the man
page.

> And what does having a keyserver in the file provide?

A keyserver is a host that holds a database of peoples public keys.
On receipt of a signed communication, we can ping a keyserver,
retrieve the person's key and hopefully verify the signature. All
automatically (mutt allows this quite nicely for instance).

Keyservers seem to be of variable accessibility but I find the
following works in my ~/.gnupg/options file ;

keyserver wwwkeys.cz.pgp.net

Hope some of that helps.

--
Alastair |
alastair@calliope.demon.co.uk |
http://www.calliope.demon.co.uk | PGP Key : A9DE69F8
-------------------------------------------------------------------

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On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Bryan K. Walton wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, David T-G wrote:
>
> > I have wwwkeys.us.pgp.net in my GPG options file, and it usually works.
>
> Please forgive my ignorance here. I installed gnupg yesterday and have my
> key, etc., etc. But what do you mean by "gpg options file". Where is
> this file? And what does having a keyserver in the file provide?
>

try ~/.gnupg/options. This file contains all your settings. Among others
your keyserver, which is a server where public keys are stored. If you
don't use a keyserver, you need to manually import every public key you
need. If you uncomment the keyserver option and set it to a valid
keyserver (pgpkeys.mit.edu, horowitz.surfnet.nl etc), gpg will contact the
keyserver to look up any public keys you don't have.

Stefan


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I find it particularly troubling that you can't search for a
user@host.domain in Unix, however you can in PGP for Windows. Command
line is much better in any case, and in most cases, much more powerful.
I wonder why this hasn't been implemented, just yet.

On Tue, Aug 22, 2000 at 01:31:57PM -0700, Anton Graham muttered:
| Submitted 22 Aug, 2000 by David T-G:
|
| > might be considered. I dunno if "all keyservers" talk to each other or
| > if there are multiple key databases that are shared amongst a subset of
| > servers, either.
|
| I would tend to suspect the latter. As far as I can tell, there are at
| least two distinct types of keyservers: pgp.net and keyserver.net.
| There are, in fact, keys that are available via one of them but not the
| other.
|
| --
| Anton Graham GPG ID: 0x18F78541
| <darkimage@bigfoot.com> RSA key available upon request
|
| I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
| -- David Bowie
|



--
/Jason G Helfman

"At any given moment, you may find the ticket to the circus that has always
been in your possession."

Fingerprint: 6A32 3774 E390 33B5 8C96 2AA1 2BF4 BD71 35A1 C149
GnuPG http://www.gnupg.org Get Private! 1024D/35A1C149

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