How to delete superceded self signatures?

[David Shaw]

On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 11:36:30AM +0200, Johan Wevers wrote:
> Hallo,
> 
> When I check my own key, I see this:
> 
> vulcan:~> gpg --edit-key 9E8C5DDF
> Command> check
> uid  Johan Wevers <johanw at vulcan.xs4all.nl>
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2005-06-03  [self-signature]
> sig!         434ABDAD 2000-08-11  Zenon Panoussis
> sig!         FB64FCB3 2000-08-20  <eric at terra.hacktic.nl>
> sig!         D96CE99D 2000-08-20  Eric Veldhuyzen <eric at terra.nu>
> sig!         05C6DB7B 2001-02-22  Karin Spaink <kspaink at xs4all.nl>
> sig!         0D751CE3 2002-10-15  Lachlan Mann <Lachlan.Mann at Oracle.com>
> sig!         4699CDCE 2002-10-29  Lachlan R Mann <Lachlan.Mann at oracle.com>
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2000-08-11  [self-signature]
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2000-08-11  [self-signature]
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2000-08-11  [self-signature]
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2000-08-11  [self-signature]
> uid  Johan Wevers <johanw at xs4all.nl>
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2005-06-03  [self-signature]
> sig!         FB64FCB3 2000-08-20  <eric at terra.hacktic.nl>
> sig!         D96CE99D 2000-08-20  Eric Veldhuyzen <eric at terra.nu>
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2000-08-11  [self-signature]
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2000-08-11  [self-signature]
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2000-08-11  [self-signature]
> sig!3        9E8C5DDF 2000-08-11  [self-signature]
> 1 signature not checked due to a missing key
> 
> I want to delete some of these self signatures. (probably 3 of the 4 on the
> creation date are useless anyway). I see 4 signatures dated on the creation
> date of the key. I'm not sure how I got them; do you get a new one if you
> change your preferences list (yesterday I added bzip2 as supported
> compression algo, the upper selfsig shows that date)? I want to export the
> key clean, but keep the signatures of the other people who signed it.

Funny you should mention that....  Install the 1.4.2 release
candidate, do --edit-key and then "clean sigs".  This is a new feature
in 1.4.2, and I'm still playing around with ways to tie it into export
and import (optionally).

Anyway, if you do "clean sigs", it'll strip any superceded sigs.

David