Newbie having a few problems getting going.

David Turner dct25@cam.ac.uk
Wed Apr 25 13:07:01 2001


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Problem #1
- ----------

One of my friends gets a blank message when he decrypts my emails.

I normally send thru Pine, but when that turned out not to be working I
tried things like:

cat - ~/.signature <<EOF | \
gpg -r <his keyid> -r 89267d5f --armor --encrypt --sign | \
mail -s "Does this work?" -b dct25@cam.ac.uk <his email address>

The results are the same - the message he receives decrypts to a blank
message, whether he does that thru Pine or exports it to a file and runs
it through gpg manually.

However, the copy that I recieve BCC will decrypt fine.  Also, the copy
that he receives, although blank, has a good signature.  This problem only
occurs when I encrypt the message, and not when I sign it or clearsign it.

We can both send messages which work to ourselves, and I have no trouble
receiving messages from him.  He is using GnuPG 1.0.0, and I have GnuPG
1.0.4, but I'm sure I'm not the first person to try this and the FAQs
don't mention it so the problem probably isn't a software incompatibility.

Problem #2
- ----------

A second friend (using PGP 7 under Windows and Outlook) can receive my
encrypted messages, but on his system the messages do not have good
signatures.  If he forwards them back to me, I can verify the signatures.
Also, if I forward one of his signed messages back to him his system
verifys his own signature, so it doesn't look like something is mangling
the messages on the way through.

Problem #3
- ----------

[This is not strictly a problem with GnuPG so ignore it at will]

The same friend has signed my key and sent it back to me.  When I imported
the new key into my keyring, gpg claimed it hadn't changed.  When I
uploaded it to a keyserver (www.keyserver.net) my key now has two
certificates, both with MY key, one dated when I created the key and one
dated when he signed it.  That SHOULDN'T happen, surely?

- ----------

Apart from the problem solving measures described above, I have also set
up another keypair on another machine (also a linux box running GnuPG
1.0.4), and can happily converse with it.

All in all, some very funny things are happening, and I am totally at a
loss to explain them.

- -- 
Dave Turner
dct25@cam.ac.uk

"I need a new quote."

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