GPG keys and multiple computers (desktop and laptops) SOLVED

daff · Last edited by daff on Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

I just read the Gentoo GnuPG user guide and created my public and private key pair. I set up gpg-agent and pinentry and everything works fine with evolution, mutt, Licq, Psi and the like. I have also added and signed several public keys from other people I know. No major problems there.

But that's all on my desktop PC. How would I go about to use GPG on my laptop then? Do I just copy the ~/.gnupg directory from the desktop over to my laptop? It seems wrong to me to create another public/private key pair on my laptop. Wouldn't that be like having two (same) identities? And how about all the public keys I already added and signed? Would I have to add and sign them again? And how would I synchronize the signed keys between desktop and laptop?

Are there any guidelines to follow for situations like this? Any HOWTOs?

TIA!
_________________
Instead of asking why a piece of software is using 1970s technology,
start asking why software is ignoring 30 years of accumulated wisdom.

egberts

Couple of steps:

Two methods of transporting private keys on a token:
1. USB Drive - You will want to investigate in buying a USB Key Drive...to contain your private keys...
2. SmartDrive - http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/howtos/card-howto/en/smartcard-howto-single.html

I'll assume the USB Drive method here after.

To automounting that USB Drive, we'll need usbmount package.

daff · Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:13 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the reply and the detailed instructions!

I already found some information on this topic in the gnupg-users mailing list. Seems that when you trust your computers (i.e. nobody else has easy access) you can just keep copies of your ~/.gnupg directory on all of them. You just have to make sure that they are synchronised with each other. The idea with the USB stick also came up, with ~/.gnupg being a softlink to the .gnupg directory on the USB stick.

So there are a few methods one could use. I am glad, however, that my initial questions about the usage of GnuPG on different machines are now answered.

Thanks again!
_________________
Instead of asking why a piece of software is using 1970s technology,
start asking why software is ignoring 30 years of accumulated wisdom.

adsmith · Veteran Joined: 26 Sep 2004 Posts: 1386 Location: NC, USA

Question for you:
how did you get mutt to use gpg-agent?

daff · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 9:29 pm Post subject:

I didn't, apparently. Mutt seems to ignore any agent and only cache passphrases for itself, as long as mutt session runs (or not as long). I use evolution as my main mail client, which is working fine with gpg-agent.
_________________
Instead of asking why a piece of software is using 1970s technology,
start asking why software is ignoring 30 years of accumulated wisdom.