So, years ago I tried PGP/GPG and put my key up on the public keyservers.
And then promptly lost the private key data. Lather, rinse, repeat, and now there are like 5 old GPG/PGP identities for me up there that are gone forever and can’t be revoked.
So, it’s 2024, and I think “I have a NAS I do regular backups and test restores on. Surely I can keep my private key data safe and secure now”.
So I get GPG going, create my keys, and then, not knowing any better? copy my entire $HOME/.gnupg directory to my NAS.
The goal here is for me to be able to use the same private key across all the machines I use. There are several.
But when I copy down that directory, GPG refuses to “see” it. gpg --list-secret-keys prints - Nothing.
- Is there a better way to keep my key in sync across all my machines? I’d rather not use keybase if possible, they give me the willies after tainting themselves with cryptocurrency and being bought.
- Assuming there isn’t, what am I doing wrong with my ~/.gnupg directory?
Thanks in advance!
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
- 0 users online
- 57 users / day
- 383 users / week
- 1.5K users / month
- 5.7K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 2.42K Posts
- 56.9K Comments
- Modlog
Why not just export the secret key to the NAS and then import it on whatever device needs it? No reason to copy and paste the whole directory to each machine.
Yup that’s the solution I went with in the end analysis. Just use the exported text file copies of my keys and I’m good to go :)