Cannot encrypt/decrypt zip-Files correctly (Andreas)

[Steve Butler]

I missed the -a flag on the first read.  So, the encrypted file could be
ftp'ed as ASCII as the -a does give the ASCII armoring.

However, the important piece is that the file (before encryption and after
decryption) is a gzipped file.  Now, unless somebody can show me a new flag
for gzip, all such files are binary even though you start with ASCII text
files.  So, Andreas was looking at a gzipped file and wondering why it
looked funny.  If he had uncompressed it after decrypting then it would have
looked like his original file. 

Now, gpg does do it's own compression so it generally wouldn't be a good
idea to compress files with some other utility prior to feeding them to gpg.
But, I can think of some reasons why that might be desirable (disregarding
any side affects of attempting to compress an already compressed file).

--Steve

PS  None of the "desirable" reasons will hold water for a purist.

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter T. Abplanalp [mailto:pta@psaconsultants.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 11:18 AM
To: gnupg-users@gnupg.org
Subject: Re: Cannot encrypt/decrypt zip-Files correctly (Andreas)


don't you have to specify ascii armoring on the command line tho?
andreas doesn't do that in his command line.  or is gpg smart enough
to ascii armor a .txt output file based on extension?

On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 10:50:05AM -0700, Leigh S. Jones, KR6X wrote:
> Don't be deceived by incorrect answers.
> 
> ASCII-armored outputs from encrypted binary files are perfectly OK.  They
> contain
> the full 8 bit binary content of the input file converted to the text
output
> format.  The
> method for doing this was long established before PGP/gpg were created.
No
> data is lost or corrupted by stripping the high order bit from
ASCII-armored
> gpg
> outputs; tarfiles may be damaged by transport in ASCII mode with ftp, but
> ASCII-
> armored gpg outputs are ftp safe, even if the original data is binary.
Your
> problem
> lies elsewhere.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <akorthaus@web.de>
> To: <gnupg-users@gnupg.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 09:18
> Subject: Cannot encrypt/decrypt zip-Files correctly
> 
> 
> > Hi!
> > I?ve got a strange problem.  I try to encrypt a gz-file on my Linux
Server
> > using GPG, and download the encrypted file, and decrypt it with WinPT on
> my
> > PC(Win2K).
> > That`s what I?ve tried in SHELL:
> >
> > (17:23:59) [webseite] gpg -o out.txt -a -e --default-recipient akorthaus
> > mysql.zip
> >
> > in the same way I encrypted html-files which I could decrypt without any
> > problems.
> >
> > Now I open out.txt and copied the code to my clipboard. After that I
> opened
> > WinPT and decrypted the code from clipboard, that worked correctly, but
> the
> > result was:
> >
> > Zip!
> >
> > As I allready said - the same way worked with html Files!
> >
> > What could be the problem, or how can I decrypt complete files using
> WinPT?
> >
> > cu
> > Andreas
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Gnupg-users mailing list
> > Gnupg-users@gnupg.org
> > http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
> >
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gnupg-users mailing list
> Gnupg-users@gnupg.org
> http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
> 

-- 
Peter Abplanalp

Email:   pta@psaconsultants.com
PGP:     pgp.mit.edu

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