Yes, you will need to transfer the keys. Mac and Linux work the same, storing the keys in ~/.gnupg. The safest way to transfer the files is using scp (part of ssh): scp -rp ~/.gnupg othermachine: However, you will need to have ssh working first. Transferring them with, say, a USB flash drive isn’t such … Read more
I just ran into this issue, on the gpg CLI in Arch Linux. I needed to kill the existing “gpg-agent” process, then everything was back to normal ( a new gpg-agent should auto-launch when you invoke the gpg command, again; …). edit: if the process fails to reload (e.g. within a minute), execute gpg-agent in … Read more
Adding –batch –yes Example: gpg –batch –yes -u me@bbb.com -r “you@aaa.com” \ –output “OUTPUTFILENAME.xls.pgp” -a -s -e “FILE.xls” Complete example with passphrase file: gpg –batch –yes –passphrase-fd 0 -u me@bbb.com -r “you@aaa.com” \ –output “OUTPUTFILENAME.xls.pgp” -a -s -e “FILE.xls”< \ passphrase.txt
On a debian box: sudo apt install pinentry-tty sudo update-alternatives –config pinentry (and set it to pinentry-tty)
The various OpenPGP keyserver synchronize, but that takes some time. If you know which keyserver will be queried, you can directly upload your key there. I did: gpg –keyserver hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net –recv-keys EE539F98 gpg –keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com –send-keys EE539F98 and now your key can successfully be found on Ubuntu’s keyserver, without having to wait until it automatically … Read more
Depending on your system hardware, you might have more reliable success using a bridge between the hardware TRNG (True random number generator) and the kernel entropy pool. I have found a remarkable speed increase by using rng-tools in the universe repository, which can be installed with Synaptic or another GUI package manager, or via the … Read more
You can set a timeout period for gpg-agent in ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf with this line: default-cache-ttl 3600 That would tell gpg-agent to store the passphrase for one hour. You wouldn’t want it to be indefinite, but not constantly typing it is of benefit too.
Run the following: find / > /dev/null That helped me quickly to complete my key generation.
I would pick GPG for file encryption, it’s got decades of secure tested encryption, and is very easy to have multiple “recipients” (backup keys?) or signatures with it’s public keys & even servers (if they would be useful). With GPG, all the simple mistakes have been avoided/fixed, it picks a longer “random” key for the … Read more