Which keyring for Public Keys ?

[David Shaw]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 05:05:55PM -0000, David Livingstone wrote:
> 
> In various documents I have come across the 2 following conflictingstatements :
> 
> The private keyring stores corresponding private & public keys; the public
> keyring stores (other peoples') public keys.
> The private keyring stores only private keys; the public keyring stores ones
> own and other peoples' public keys.
> 
> Which is correct in GnuPG ?

Both :)

The private keyring stores private keys (presumably your own).  The
public keyring stores your own and other peoples' public keys.

However - each private key also contains a copy of its corresponding
public key.  If you ever lose all copies of your public key
(unlikely), you could regenerate it (minus signatures from other
people) from the private key.

David

-- 
   David Shaw  |  dshaw@jabberwocky.com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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