pgp / gpg

Posted by William M. Connolley on September 4, 2006
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I have a load of files encrypted with pgp (2.6.2i, since you ask). But the machine at BAS this runs off is soon to be turned off, so it seems I need to upgrade to gpg instead. So… in a break from climate, can I ask the security gurus out there (are any of them reading this?)…

Can I read pgp in gpg? (I tried it a year or so ago, and failed on importing my old keys into gpg: just tried again: died on some message about missing self-signature)

Otherwise I have to decrypt 200-odd files and re-encrypt them as gpg. Not too tedious. Except I have a few others out on the web in odd locations I may struggle to find…

[Aha: progress: DanR says (see comment 1; thanks) "use --allow-non-selfsigned-uid". This works to import my key, hurrah. Now I have a problem that my old pgp files use IDEA (see http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/documentation/faqs.html#q3.3 ) so I have to get our IT folk to upgrade gpg to use this...]

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  1. #1 DanR
    2006/09/04

    See http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/pgp2x.html under “Importing PGP 2.x keys”. If pgp is still available, you can self-sign your key with it before trying to import. Otherwise, use ‘–allow-non-selfsigned-uid’ when you import the keys.

    If you are using pgp/gpg to sign files that are distributed to others, you should self-sign your public key after importing; if you are only ever using it to encrypt your private files (i.e. you will never give anyone your public key), then having your public-key self-signed with your private key isn’t necessary, so just ‘–allow-non-selfsigned-uid’ on import.