Can I revitalise an old key-pair?

[John Clizbe]

Pete Stephenson wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 2:57 PM, MartinHvidberg <martin at hvidberg.net> wrote:
>> Or do I need to get one of my old computers up and running, hoping to find
>> some sort of key file there.
> 
> If you go through your old systems and are able to find the relevant
> secret key files or the GPG/PGP keyring files, then you can continue
> using that keypair. If you cannot find the secret key, you'll need to
> create a new keypair. :/
> 
On *nix and similar systems (MacOSX, Cygwin) GnuPG stores keyring files in
~/.gnupg (~ = your login directory: /home/<username> or /Users/<username>)

On Windows XP and older, keyring files were stored in
<drive>:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Gnupg

Windows Vista and newer versions use
<drive>:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\gnupg

You'll want the contents for all of the directories you can find. A tool such
as the linux-based SystemRescueCD [http://www.sysresccd.org/‎ ] makes this
task somewhat easier.

You should be able to use the newest set of keyring files directly. The keys
in the older keyring files may be imported later.

-- 
John P. Clizbe                      Inet: John (a) Gingerbear DAWT net
SKS/Enigmail/PGP-EKP                  or: John ( @ ) Enigmail DAWT net
FSF Assoc #995 / FSFE Fellow #1797  hkp://keyserver.gingerbear.net  or
     mailto:pgp-public-keys at gingerbear.net?subject=HELP

Q:"Just how do the residents of Haiku, Hawai'i hold conversations?"
A:"An odd melody / island voices on the winds / surplus of vowels"



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 865 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: </pipermail/attachments/20130901/dc1219bd/attachment.sig>