Lost key -- retrieval possible?

[Nori Heikkinen]

on Mon, 10 Feb 2003 12:46:41PM -0500, David Shaw insinuated:
> 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:
[...]
> > > 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?  

That's the value of '--export-secret-key nori', yes ... 

> 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.

oh, i hoped something like that hadn't happened ... i don't understand
how it could have, as i didn't rename files or anything!

> Do you have any backups?  

in all the backups i have, the output of the above command looks the
same.

> Or perhaps when you were copying files around you copied the secret
> keyring into a different file?

what would i be looking for?  something that said "private key
packet"?  if so, should i just make a backup directory, go through,
and rename everything in in secring.gpg, and then try the command,
grepping for "private"?

thanks again,

</nori>

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