What is a reliable way to backup/restore my keys and test?

[Duane Whitty]

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Hello,

I am relatively new to GNUPG so my apologies in advance if this
question is trivial.  I have been following the list and have seen
discussions of how to fix problems regarding backing up and restoring
of keys but I have not seen anything on how to do it properly to begin
with.

I've just copied my .gnupg directory to a usb key as a backup measure,
which I found as a method (more or less) on
http://www.glump.net/content/gpg_intro/.  I am planning on upgrading
my OS and I need to test this backup.  How can I make sure my private
key and trust assignments were copied properly?

Once I have completed my OS upgrade how do I restore my keys and the
trust levels assigned to them?

I use Thunderbird/Enigmail which is using gpg2 but I originally
created my key pair using gpg 1.4.  Does this have any ramifications?

$ uname -a
Linux XXX 4.2.0-38-generic #45~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 9 09:28:50
UTC 2016 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

$ /usr/bin/gpg --version
gpg (GnuPG) 1.4.16
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Home: ~/.gnupg
Supported algorithms:
Pubkey: RSA, RSA-E, RSA-S, ELG-E, DSA
Cipher: IDEA, 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, AES, AES192, AES256, TWOFISH,
        CAMELLIA128, CAMELLIA192, CAMELLIA256
Hash: MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, SHA224
Compression: Uncompressed, ZIP, ZLIB, BZIP2

$ /usr/bin/gpg2 --version
gpg (GnuPG) 2.0.22
libgcrypt 1.5.3
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Home: ~/.gnupg
Supported algorithms:
Pubkey: RSA, ELG, DSA, ?, ?
Cipher: IDEA, 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, AES, AES192, AES256, TWOFISH,
        CAMELLIA128, CAMELLIA192, CAMELLIA256
Hash: MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, SHA224
Compression: Uncompressed, ZIP, ZLIB, BZIP2

Thunderbird 38.8.0

I hope this provides the required information.  Please let me know if
I should include something else.

Best Regards,
Duane

- -- 
Duane Whitty
duane at nofroth.com
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