question about determining the key length

Robert J. Hansen rjh at sixdemonbag.org
Tue Nov 14 23:54:00 CET 2017


> Is there a way to determine the key length and the type of key (RSA or
> other) used when generating  the keyring?

There seems to be a misunderstanding here.  A keyring is just a
collection of certificates (which used to be called "keys").  Each
individual certificate will have various subkeys of different
algorithms, but the keyring *as a whole* has no algorithm nor bit length.

To get a detailed look at an individual key, try --list-key.  (Which
should really be "--list-certificate".  We're changing our language very
slowly.)

E.g.:

quorra:~ rjh$ gpg --list-key b44427c7
pub   rsa3072/1DCBDC01B44427C7 2015-07-16 [SC]
      CC11BE7CBBED77B120F37B011DCBDC01B44427C7
uid                 [ultimate] Robert J. Hansen <rjh at sixdemonbag.org>
uid                 [ultimate] Robert J. Hansen <rob at hansen.engineering>
uid                 [ultimate] Robert J. Hansen <rob at enigmail.net>
sub   rsa3072/DC0F82625FA6AADE 2015-07-16 [E]
sub   ed25519/A83CAE94D3DC3873 2017-04-05 [S]
sub   cv25519/AA24CC81B8AED08B 2017-04-05 [E]

The primary subkey is RSA-3072, made on July 16, 2015.  There are three
other subkeys: an RSA-3072 useful for encryption (same date), an
Edwards-25519 key useful for signing (dating April 5, 2017); and an
ECC-25519 key useful for encryption (April 5, 2017).



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