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pschmidt
Asked: 2011-03-29 10:24:28 +0800 CST

How to share one pgp-key on multiple machines?

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How can I export a pgp-key from one machine and import it to another? The only way I figured out (in seahorse) was to import it to the section other keys.

But I want to use one single pgp-key from diffrent machines. Is this easier to solve via terminal and gpg? I'm a little bit confused about seahorse.

gnupg

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In a terminal, run the following:

    gpg --export-secret-key -a > secretkey.asc

    And on the other system, import the secret key with:

    gpg --import secretkey.asc

    Alternatively, if you've got ssh access to the other system you should be able to combine these two actions into a single command:

    gpg --export-secret-key -a | ssh othermachine gpg --import -

    Once the keyfiles have served their purpose, securely delete them:

    shred secretkey.asc && rm secretkey.asc

    or

    shred --remove secretkey.asc

    Make sure to shred and remove the key instead of using normal deletion. Additionally, instead of moving the keyfile with mv, copy it, then shred and remove the original. These methods will prevent an attacker from recovering the key through low-level bit inspection.

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