Need help doing gpg encryption without prompting for passphrase

[BradBlake]

Hi all,

I could REALLY use some assistance – I need to encrypt a file with gpg (my
Linux server is on version 1.2.6), I need to encrypt it with the public key
from our client, and sign it with our private PGP key. I’ve got this all
working (I imported their public key, and sent them our key), so I can run a
command like this from the command line to encrypt the file:

gpg --armor --output encrypted_file.gpg --recipient "pgpadmin at ourclient.com"
--local-user "myusername at mycompany.com" --sign --encrypt file_to_encrypt.txt

This works fine (and our client is able to decrypt), but it is prompting for
my passphrase each time.  We want to set this up to run as an automated
process via a script, without prompting for a passphrase.  So I was trying
to follow the instructions found here:  http://www.gnupg.org/faq.html#q4.14

Here are the steps I just ran:
1.	I ran the command “gpg --edit-key myusername at mycompany.com”, then
specified “addkey”, selected the DSA key type.  It prompted me for my
passphrase, and ran successfully, so I saved and quit.
2.	I ran the command “gpg --export-secret-subkeys --no-sk-comments  >
secring.auto” that generated the secring.auto file, that I assume I need to
email to the client to import on their side?  (when I tried to run it just
like in step 3 on the website, I got errors, and not sure if I need to
follow steps 4-7?)
3.	Now to try and encrypt without a passphrase, I tried this command (same
command as above, just added the flag --batch”):
a.	gpg --batch --armor --output encrypted_file.gpg --recipient
"pgpadmin at ourclient.com" --local-user myusername at mycompany.com" --sign
--encrypt file_to_encrypt.txt
b.	And I am seeing this error:

$ gpg --batch --armor --output encrypted_file.gpg --recipient
"pgpadmin at ourclient.com" --local-user "myusername at mycompany.com" --sign
--encrypt file_to_encrypt.txt
gpg: can't query password in batchmode
gpg: skipped `myusername at mycompany.com': bad passphrase
gpg: file_to_encrypt.txt: sign+encrypt failed: bad passphrase

Are you able to help me with this?  I appreciate any assistance you can
offer, thanks!!!  Am I just missing something simple?  Am I better off to
delete and recreate the keys?

Thank you,
Brad Blake

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