Michael Paquier - PostgreSQL committer

Here is a short manual for GPG.

Generate a key

The following command can be used:

gpg --gen-key

Default settings may be enough for your environments, or not. Hence be careful in what you are using here.

Add email to key

Here is how to add a new email address to a given key:

gpg --edit-key
> adduid
# Fill in the fields

Deletion

Here is how to delete a public key associated to an account name, note that is there are a private key in your private key ring associated with it it will generate an error.

gpg --delete-key "User Name"

Here is how to delete a private key from the secret key ring.

gpg --delete-secret-key "User Name"

Listing

Here is how to list public keys:

gpg --list-keys

And here is how to list the private keys:

gpg --list-secret-keys

Export

To export a public key:

gpg --export -a "User Name" > public.key

To export a private key:

gpg --export-secret-key -a "User Name" > private.key

Import

To import a public key:

gpg --import public.key

To import a private key:

gpg --allow-secret-key-import --import secret.gpg.key

Encryption and decryption

Here is how to encrypt some data:

gpg -e -r "User Name" file.txt

And how to decrypt it:

gpg -d file.txt.gpg

Receive and send

Look at the list of keys available in your environment to list an ID:

gpg --list-secret-keys

Then send it:

gpg --keyserver keyserver.example.com --send-keys id_of_key

Here is how to receive it:

gpg --keyserver keyserver.example.com --recv-keys id_of_key

Search

Here is how to look up for existing keys.

gpg --keyserver keyserver.example.com \ # Ex: (keys.gnupg.net)
    --search-keys "Search String, user name or email"