Why the software is crap

[Gabriel Niebler]

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Dear David, dear fellow GnuPG users,

this conversation made me curious, so I tried to do it myself. Here's
what I did on my work laptop, just now, five minutes ago (in my home dir):

$ rm -rf .gnupg
$ scp -r ${myfileserver}:${pathtobackupsfromOTHERlaptop}/.gnupg/ .
(...)
$ rm .gnupg/random_seed
$ echo "My hovercraft is full of fish, but I tell everyone they're
eels." > my_big_secret.txt
$ gpg --encrypt --recipient 0x65A3F1CC8303C0EC my_big_secret.txt
$ rm my_big_secret.txt
$ gpg --decrypt my_big_secret.txt.gpg

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "Gabriel Niebler <gabriel.niebler at gmail.com>"
2048-bit RSA key, ID 0x65A3F1CC8303C0EC, created 2014-03-16
         (subkey on main key ID 0xD05AF6C786CB34F4)

gpg: encrypted with 2048-bit RSA key, ID 0x65A3F1CC8303C0EC, created
2014-03-16
      "Gabriel Niebler <gabriel.niebler at gmail.com>"
My hovercraft is full of fish, but I tell everyone they're eels.


So this all worked and the fact that this message is signed (using
Enigmail/Thunderbird) is further proof that the method worked for me.

Now that we have established that simply copying over your .gnupg
directory from one machine to another and deleting random_seed does
indeed produce the desired result for some people, maybe you can walk
us through exactly what you did and we'll see if we can't figure out
what the problem is. I suggest copying and pasting shell commands and
their output verbatim.

If you do not want to bother the rest of the list with this you are
welcome to send mails directly to me. I am not an expert, but I'm
willing to help you.

Best
gabe

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