Mailing List Archive

Migrating password store to new hard drive
Hello,

I have recently installed a new SSD on my computer and I am trying to
move my password store (using pass) to the new drive. I am using Ubuntu
20.04.2 LTS.

I can see the individual *.gpg files that form the password store but I
am not able to decrypt them.

Here are some things I have tried

$gpg -K

returns with nothing

Running gpg directly on a single file in the password store using

$gpg -d filename

gives

$gpg: encrypted with 3072-bit RSA key, ID 94FDE31D5B3E9BC6, created
2020-03-11
"my@emailaddress.com"
$gpg: decryption failed: No secret key


I tried exporting the secret key from the old drive using

$gpg --export-secret-keys --armor --output privkey.asc my@emailaddress.com

and tried importing on the new drive using

$gpg --import privkey.asc

the import process seems to succeed with the following message
$gpg: key D96B626F551DE067: "my@emailaddress.com" not changed
$gpg: key D96B626F551DE067: secret key imported
$gpg: Total number processed: 1
$gpg:              unchanged: 1
$gpg:       secret keys read: 1
$gpg:  secret keys unchanged: 1

Not sure if it is important or not but inside the
~/.gnupg/private-keys-v1.d/ directory I have 2 files

5A96EC16F8D4B37AEEF42D805853853AAECAAE20.key
6E8963C9E7FBC51DEFA9DDE31FC12AC65F7D865D.key

Cheers, Neil
Re: Migrating password store to new hard drive [ In reply to ]
On Sonntag, 4. April 2021 20:14:56 CEST Neil Webster via Gnupg-users wrote:
> I have recently installed a new SSD on my computer and I am trying to
> move my password store (using pass) to the new drive. I am using Ubuntu
> 20.04.2 LTS.

I have always copied the whole ~/.gnupg folder from the old system/disk to the
new system/disk when I migrated to a new PC or a new hard drive. Actually, I
always copied my whole home directory. Only when setting up a secondary
computer I copied selected folders including the ~/.gnupg folder and the
password store.

I suggest to do the same, i.e., instead of exporting and importing secret
keys, simply copy the .gnupg folder from the old disk to the new disk. Make a
backup of the already existing .gnupg folder on the new disk before proceeding
just in case.

Regards,
Ingo
Re: Migrating password store to new hard drive [ In reply to ]
That worked. Thanks for the help.

On 4/4/21 3:48 PM, Ingo Kl?cker wrote:
> On Sonntag, 4. April 2021 20:14:56 CEST Neil Webster via Gnupg-users wrote:
>> I have recently installed a new SSD on my computer and I am trying to
>> move my password store (using pass) to the new drive. I am using Ubuntu
>> 20.04.2 LTS.
> I have always copied the whole ~/.gnupg folder from the old system/disk to the
> new system/disk when I migrated to a new PC or a new hard drive. Actually, I
> always copied my whole home directory. Only when setting up a secondary
> computer I copied selected folders including the ~/.gnupg folder and the
> password store.
>
> I suggest to do the same, i.e., instead of exporting and importing secret
> keys, simply copy the .gnupg folder from the old disk to the new disk. Make a
> backup of the already existing .gnupg folder on the new disk before proceeding
> just in case.
>
> Regards,
> Ingo
>
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