Lost key -- retrieval possible?

[David Shaw]

On Sun, Feb 09, 2003 at 11:11:19AM -0500, Nori Heikkinen wrote:
> on Sat, 08 Feb 2003 10:23:54PM -0500, David Shaw insinuated:
> > On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 12:38:35AM -0500, Nori Heikkinen wrote:
> > > in moving files around between computers (frantically doing
> > > backups when i thought my hard drive was on the fritz), i seem to
> > > have corrupted or lost my private key.  i of course have no backup
> > > of the key, and failed to generate a revocation certificate (it
> > > will expire in a few months, though).  rather than just letting it
> > > die, though, i was hoping there was a way to recover it.
> > > 
> > > i can't read anything encrypted to me, or sign or encrypt
> > > anything.  when i try to (with mutt or on the command line), i get
> > > the error message:
> > > 
> > > gpg: Ohhhh jeeee: ... this is a bug (getkey.c:2151:lookup) secmem
> > > usage: 1632/1632 bytes in 3/3 blocks of pool 1632/16384
> > > 
> > > which seems to me exceedingly weird.
> > 
> > That is indeed weird.  That means you have something other than a
> > secret key mixed in with your secret key data.  It does look like
> > corruption.

[..]

> > If that does not help, then I need some more information.  What
> > happens when you do:
> > 
> >   gpg --no-comment --export-secret-key nori | gpg --list-packets
> 
> below.
> 
> :public key packet:
>   version 4, algo 17, created 1024861383, expires 0

> :public sub key packet:
>   version 4, algo 16, created 1024861420, expires 0

That's a public key.  Are you sure you got that from your secret
keyring?  If so, I think when you were copying data around, you might
have copied your public key on top of your secret key.  That is
consistent with the other errors you reported as well.

Do you have any backups?  Or perhaps when you were copying files
around you copied the secret keyring into a different file?

David

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