GPG cannot import public key

[David Shaw]

On Apr 23, 2014, at 3:24 PM, helices <gpg at mdsresource.net> wrote:

> No matter how I try, I cannot encrypt a file using that public key, even using --edit-key to assign trust:
> 
> gpg: 845F5188: skipped: Unusable public key
> 
> gpg: /tmp/test.txt: encryption failed: Unusable public key
> 
>  
> The owner of the public key insists that it is self-signed; but, our GPG cannot find the self-signature

It doesn't look like it's self-signed, but without looking at the key itself, I couldn't say for sure.  Is it posted anywhere on the net?

In any event, you can override the check for encryption with the same flag you used to override the check on import.  So:

  gpg -r 845F5188 --allow-non-selfsigned-uid -e the-file-i-am-encrypting-etc.txt

David