<<< Date Index >>>     <<< Thread Index >>>

Re: gpg



G'day Stephen,

* Stephen Allen <kru_tch@xxxxxxxx> [040301 22:43]:

> OK I added the following to my muttrc and it know works:
>       
>       set pgp_autosign = yes
>       set pgp_sign_as = "F8A48DF1"

Sweet!  Congrats!


> > 3) Have you used the pgp_sign_as variable in mutt?  For example I sign
> >    with my 0x35DB7472 (sub)key so I have the following in my .muttrc
> >  set pgp_sign_as="0x35DB7472!"
> 
> I'm using signing with a default key now. But it's not in the format you have 
> above,
> but more along the line of 'F8A48DF1'. Is that significant?

Not really.  (All of the comments should be prefaced with 'As I
understand it...')  The pgp_sign_as passes the key information along
to gpg.  Now the guys who write gpg (and at least one is on this list)
are pretty smart so they know that some people are going to put the
hex(?) part of their key down as 'F8A48DF1' whilst others want to
force GPG to know that the text is hex and so put the '0x' in front.

I guess this will only really be a problem if you have a information
on your key (for example an email address) which matches the
fingerprint of another key.  So for example a (famous) key is
0xDEADBEEF, but some one might have DEADBEEF@xxxxxxxxxxx as their
email address on another secret key.  What is the correct behaviour
for GPG if you specify your pgp_sign_as to be 'DEADBEEF'?

The only other difference is the '!' at the end of my fingerprint.
That is to tell gpg to use the 0x35DB7472 subkey, not which ever one it
thinks it wants to use when signing.  If you do 
'gpg --list-keys B3334559' (see I've dropped the 0x for simplicity!)
you will notice I have three subkeys, as opposed to the usual one...

  pub  1024D/B3334559 2003-05-14
  sub  2048g/A11D9315 2003-05-14
  sub  1024D/246383E6 2003-05-14
  sub  1024D/35DB7472 2003-05-14

I want to force mutt to use the 35DB7472 key to sign emails, and the
others for other purposes.

Confused yet???  ;-)



> What is the subkey, as opposed to the line above it when one issues the

I don't want to sound patronising, but this might be a bridge too far
at the moment.  I would get your mutt working and then explore more
about GPG.  A fantastic (IMHO) website is:
   http://fortytwo.ch/gpg/subkeys/
 
> Oh yeah, how do I get mutt to show my other keys, so I can sign
> according to my send-hook? I can't seem to find anything that specifies
> how one does this.

Good question.  Mutt will show you the keys of people you are sending
to, but you need to know the key that you are going to use for signing
yourself.  As a guess I would say that if you have multiple keys that
you want to use for signing, try using aliases/send-hooks to change
your pgp_sign_as.


> Thanks for the assistance.

Glad to help (?)



Cheers,

S.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature