warning msg - what does it mean

[David Jourard]

Hi,

At 11:25 PM 12/9/02 -0500, David Shaw wrote:
>On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 11:09:19PM -0600, David Jourard wrote:
> > ** I would like though to maintain just one  public key ring for all users
> > using gpg for e-mail encryption. **
> >
> > Is there anyway to set the permissions securely  on the keyring and  have
> > each script which runs under a different user access the one public key
> > ring and gpg.
>
>Well, no.  "Securely" in this case means that the user that owns the
>keyring is the only one that can write to it.  If you want to have a
>keyring that multiple users can write to, then it isn't secure by that
>definition.
>
>If you put the keyring in any directory other than the home directory,
>GnuPG won't do the permissions check.  You can also disable the
>permissions check with --no-permission-warning.

I'm not familiar with how gpg  works when it is used to encrypt an e-mail 
for instance; but if this is all I need it for - to encrypt an e-mail using 
a public key - then why does it need to write to disk. I would think that 
the gpg need only read the public key?

regards
David