Offline Primary Key

[Phillip Susi]

On 3/1/2010 3:37 PM, David Shaw wrote:
>> This does the trick, but I still do not understand why
>> --delete-secret-key removes BOTH the primary and subkey secrets
>> when I specifically gave only the ID of the subkey?  Shouldn't it
>> remove exactly what I say and no more?
>
> It has to do with how keys are specified.  In GnuPG, you can specify
> a key in a number of ways - by name, by (any) fingerprint, and by
> (any) key ID.  So if you have a key named "foobar", and the key ID is
> AAAAAAAA and the subkey ID is BBBBBBBB, you could refer to that key
> with any of "foobar", "AAAAAAAA", or "BBBBBBBB".  When you say
> "--delete-secret-key BBBBBBB", you're actually saying delete the
> whole key.


Can this be overridden?  I thought that is what the ! suffix was for,
but it still deletes the whole thing.