can't change the primary uid on a RSA key

[David Shaw]

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On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 05:50:39PM +0100, Clemens Buchmann wrote:

> I have a RSA key which is made with pgp-6.5.8, because gnupg-1.2.1
> generates singing only RSA keys. So I imported that key into my gpg
> here, added a uid and now I can't change the primary uid. The second uid
> I added was automatically set as primary uid. I tried to change the
> primary uid as described with:
> 
> 
> pub  2048R/89BC559F  created: 2003-02-16 expires: never      trust: u/u
> (1)  Clemens Buchmann <caligo@elizium.de>
> (2). Clemens Buchmann <caligo@deadheaven.de>
> 
> Command> uid 1
> 
> pub  2048R/89BC559F  created: 2003-02-16 expires: never      trust: u/u
> (1)* Clemens Buchmann <caligo@elizium.de>
> (2). Clemens Buchmann <caligo@deadheaven.de>
> 
> Command> primary
> gpg: skipping v3 self-signature on user id "Clemens Buchmann
> <caligo@elizium.de>"
> gpg: skipping v3 self-signature on user id "Clemens Buchmann
> <caligo@deadheaven.de>"

[..]

> As you can see the primary uid is not changed to uid 1 as I
> 'commanded'.  I tried that with a DSA key and it worked as it
> should, but not with this RSA key. I couldn't find anything on that
> topic so far so it might be a bug. - Maybe you can help me out
> here. Mayn thanks in advance!

Note the error message you received.  User IDs with v3 self-signatures
(generally old PGP 2.x keys) cannot receive the primary uid flag.
That is a v4 feature and requires more modern keys.

You can promote your old key to one with v4 self-signatures, but then
the key cannot be used in PGP 2.x any longer.

David
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