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FreeAsInGimme

Member

Registered: 2012-09-21

Posts: 7

[SOLVED] Forgot to export GnuPG keys before wiping installation

I forgot that I needed to export GPG keys. My old installation has been wiped, but I did back up the entire home directory. I have copied over the .gnupg directory, but still cannot decrypt my files. Is there any way to work around this?

Thanks.

Last edited by FreeAsInGimme (2017-12-19 16:05:11)

eschwartz

Fellow

Registered: 2014-08-08

Posts: 4,097

Re: [SOLVED] Forgot to export GnuPG keys before wiping installation

If you copied over the old ~/.gnupg/ directory to ~/.gnupg on the new machine, then you should absolutely have the same keys, locked with the same passwords if applicable.

So there must be more to it than that. Can you explain further? Does gpg --list-secret-keys show any available secret keys (specifically the one used to encrypt the files)?

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Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

FreeAsInGimme

Member

Registered: 2012-09-21

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Forgot to export GnuPG keys before wiping installation

It did not show any avaiable secret keys. I figured it out. I had to do the following to fix permissions after I restored the .gnupg folder from my backup:

sudo chown -R "$USER:$(id -gn)" ~/.gnupg

Then:

cd ~/.gnupg
gpg --import pubring.gpg
gpg --import secring.gpg

Thanks for the help!