gpg --edit-key when the key has many signatures

[David Shaw]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 09:05:24PM +0200, Thomas Viehmann wrote:
> David Shaw wrote:
> > Check something for me - you say there are 16 uids.  Do an --edit-key
> > on this key and count them.  Then do a --list-keys on this key and
> > again count the uids.  Do all the numbers match?
> No, they're 16 uids in the list and 8 on edit, as one might expect from
> these figures, all uid's are there twice.
> 
> > Also, is --list-keys really slow like --edit-key or is it fast?  If
> > --list-keys is fast, then check if --check-sigs on this key is slow.
> list keys is fast, check sigs is fast.
> 
> > There are two good possible reasons why this key is slow for you, and
> > I'm trying to nail down which one.
> Yeah, thanks, it looks like it's got something to do with the uids, right?

Yep.  You've been caught by a keyserver bug.  Sometimes keyservers
duplicate user IDs, signatures and all.  GnuPG knows about this bug,
so when you use --edit-key, it checks for duplicate user IDs and
collapses them into one.  This takes some time when there are a lot of
signatures.

The answer is to --edit-key the key, wait until you get a prompt, and
then just enter "save".  This saves the key in the fixed state and now
--edit-key should be fast again.

However, note that the keyserver may well give you duplicate user IDs
again the next time you refresh the key...

Which keyserver do you use?

David