Problem removing a public key whose private key is gone

Jeremiah Foster jeremiah.foster at gmail.com
Wed Mar 8 19:06:50 CET 2006


On Wed, 2006-03-08 at 18:42 +0100, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> 
> >Hey Chris, 
> >
> >Yeah I saw that from the man page and it did not help. Specifically
> >because the names are identical and when you issue --delete-key name you
> >get prompted to specify the secret key which does not exist in my case.
> >So delete-key fails to work for my needs.
> >
> >Jeremiah
> >  
> >
> If you'd read the other parts of the manpage you'd see that name is not
> only limited to your name or the UIDs email adress but you can also
> specify one of the key IDs.
> 
> You'll get the key IDs of you keys with gpg --list-keys. They (should)
> key ID should be different for both of your keys, if not, you'll have to
> use the long key ID, but that is pretty unlikely.
> If even the long key IDs would be equal - that should be even posted to
> the list because it is an rarety - you'd have to use the fingerprint of
> the key as name (if even those would be equal,.. this would be nearly a
> sensation ;) ).
> 
> So take the key ID of you old unwanted key (something like 0x23459837)
> and make gpg --delete-key <key-id>.

Excellent, I will try that, thanks Chris.

Jeremiah




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