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c0rtex

Member

Registered: 2013-12-23

Posts: 13

Recovering GPG Secret Key [Solved]

Alright I kinda did a major f* up here, changed all permissions (777) system wide, so my system is completely wrecked. I've been able to backup all my data with the exception of my GPG secret key. I chrooted in to Arch from Ubuntu live cd and was able to export my public key without any issue, but with my private key, I got the following error:

gpg: key : error receiving key from agent: No pinentry - skipped 

I imagine its a problem related to permissions. I'm doing my best to read up about this, but I don't know really what to do here.

Last edited by c0rtex (2015-08-11 18:44:02)

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,734

Website

Re: Recovering GPG Secret Key [Solved]

I'm confused... can you just chmod 600 ~/.gnupg/*.gpg and try the export again?  What command are you using to export the private key?

EDIT: why not just copy over ~/.gnupg to your new system and fix the permissions... unless I'm missing something, no export/import should be needed, no?

Last edited by graysky (2015-08-11 18:22:08)

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c0rtex

Member

Registered: 2013-12-23

Posts: 13

Re: Recovering GPG Secret Key [Solved]

I'm confused... can you just chmod 600 ~/.gnupg/*.gpg and try the export again?  What command are you using to export the private key?

Here's what I'm using:

 gpg --export-secret-key -a c0rtex > private.key 

Doing that chrooted in to Arch from Ubuntu live cd.

c0rtex

Member

Registered: 2013-12-23

Posts: 13

Re: Recovering GPG Secret Key [Solved]

EDIT: why not just copy over ~/.gnupg to your new system and fix the permissions... unless I'm missing something, no export/import should be needed, no?

Yeah that did occur to me, I don't have much of an idea of how gpg operates so I don't want to assume that would work and then do a fresh install and lose my keys if it doesn't work.

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,734

Website

Re: Recovering GPG Secret Key [Solved]

EDIT: why not just copy over ~/.gnupg to your new system and fix the permissions... unless I'm missing something, no export/import should be needed, no?

Yeah that did occur to me, I don't have much of an idea of how gpg operates so I don't want to assume that would work and then do a fresh install and lose my keys if it doesn't work.

Back up your entire 777 system to a tarball and do not delete it for a few months at least.  Anyway, try the permissions thing and your export command or just copy it over and see what happens.

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c0rtex

Member

Registered: 2013-12-23

Posts: 13

Re: Recovering GPG Secret Key [Solved]

EDIT: why not just copy over ~/.gnupg to your new system and fix the permissions... unless I'm missing something, no export/import should be needed, no?

Yeah that did occur to me, I don't have much of an idea of how gpg operates so I don't want to assume that would work and then do a fresh install and lose my keys if it doesn't work.

Back up your entire 777 system to a tarball and do not delete it for a few months at least.  Anyway, try the permissions thing and your export command or just copy it over and see what happens.

Thanks, thats probably the safest option.

zed123

Member

Registered: 2018-01-26

Posts: 9

Re: Recovering GPG Secret Key [Solved]

gpg: key : error receiving key from agent: No pinentry - skipped 

I had a similar issue. This error means that there's an option missing in gpg-agent.conf. The agent needs to know how to ask for the password. There should be someting like this: pinentry-program /usr/bin/pinentry-gtk-2.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GnuPG#pinentry

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,722

Re: Recovering GPG Secret Key [Solved]

Zed123, Welcome to Arch Linux and thank you for a for a useful first post.  Do be aware of the age of threads; this one is two and a half years old.  I will use this opportunity to go ahead and close this thread.

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