Mailing List Archive

signing your public key, how?
Hi,

I've read somewhere in the docs to sign your public key.
Where in the process do you sign it?

Do I export my public key with ascii armor, then sign the ascii
file, then give that out as my public key?

Or do I use the edit-key function and sign my key
while it is in my pubring.gpg, then export it with
armor?

Does it make a difference?
Re: signing your public key, how? [ In reply to ]
zentara wrote:

> I've read somewhere in the docs to sign your public key.
> Where in the process do you sign it?

It will be automatically signed when you create it with GPG. Only some old
PGP 2.x versions don't sign their newly generated keypairs (my first key is
generated with 2.3a and that version didn't selfsign it).

> Do I export my public key with ascii armor, then sign the ascii
> file, then give that out as my public key?

No.

> Or do I use the edit-key function and sign my key
> while it is in my pubring.gpg, then export it with
> armor?

That is the correct procedure for a non-selfsigned key.

> Does it make a difference?

Yes, in the former procedure you sign the FILE containing the key, not the
key itself.

--
ir. J.C.A. Wevers // Physics and science fiction site:
johanw@vulcan.xs4all.nl // http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/index.html
PGP public keys at http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/pgpkeys.html