symmetric encryption broken

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 01:40:23PM -0700, Nathan Johnson wrote:
> >What happens if you specify "a" (ascii armor) or "t" (text file)?

> Both fail, as does --textmode.

> gpg -a -z0 -c a
> gpg -a -z0 -c a.asc
> ls
> -rw-rw-r--    1 user        users           8  a
> -rw-rw-r--    1 user        users         122  a.asc
> -rw-rw-r--    1 user        users         281  a.asc.asc

	Huh...  Wait a minute.  You're encrypting it once and then
encrypting it a second time.  What are you trying to accomplish here?

	What happens when you do the following:

	gpg -a -z0 -c a
	cp a.asc a1.asc
	gpg a1.asc
	ls -l

	Encrypt a to a.asc.  Copy the encrypted file to another file (because
gpg will insist on decrypting it back to the base name minus the .asc).
Decrypt the new encrypted file back to a new decrypted file.  Compare them.

> >I'm largely stuck working with Idea...

> Mine doesn't have Idea installed, I don't know why.  I tried 3DES and Blowfish .

	You have to load it as a module.  Presuming that the module was
installed when you instaled gpg, you should be able to add this to the
.gnupg/options file:

load-extension idea

> >Hmmm...  RedHat 7.0?

> Mandrake something or other.  I'm contemplating installing SuSE 7.0 or debian,
> though.

	Actually shouldn't make any difference.

	Mandrake is rpm based.  Did you install it from RPM or build it
yourself?

	Mike
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