"keyserver receive failed: Try again later" on macOS

[Walt Mankowski]

$ gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 77D4D81DC47D68FA9E9E6A7C5DF19E2B67A7B584
gpg: keyserver receive failed: Try again later
$ gpg --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 77D4D81DC47D68FA9E9E6A7C5DF19E2B67A7B584
gpg: keyserver receive failed: Try again later
$ gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 77D4D81DC47D68FA9E9E6A7C5DF19E2B67A7B584
gpg: key 5DF19E2B67A7B584: 1 duplicate signature removed
gpg: key 5DF19E2B67A7B584: "Walter C. Mankowski <waltman at pobox.com>" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:              unchanged: 1
$ gpg --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 77D4D81DC47D68FA9E9E6A7C5DF19E2B67A7B584
gpg: keyserver receive failed: No keyserver available
$ gpg --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371 --recv-keys 77D4D81DC47D68FA9E9E6A7C5DF19E2B67A7B584
gpg: keyserver receive failed: No keyserver available

On Wed, Jun 18, 2025, at 7:23 AM, Andrew Gallagher wrote:
> On 17 Jun 2025, at 14:41, Walt Mankowski <waltman at pobox.com> wrote:
>> 
>> When I changed the command to
>> 
>> gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com::11371 --recv-keys 77D4D81DC47D68FA9E9E6A7C5DF19E2B67A7B584
>> 
>> then it retrieved the key as expected. I added the port to gpg.conf and now everything is fine.
> 
> Aha, that’s interesting. keyserver.ubuntu.com does also serve keys on the default HTTP port, so I’m not sure why the explicit port number would help. Out of curiosity, what happens if you change it to hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com ? (with the “s” and without the port)?
> 
>> I did notice that /etc/services on macOS has two entries for hkp:
>> 
>> hkp             11371/udp    # OpenPGP HTTP Keyserver
>> hkp             11371/tcp    # OpenPGP HTTP Keyserver
>> 
>> I tried commenting out the udp version and restarting dirmngr, but that had no effect.
> No, I wouldn’t expect it to. /etc/services is mainly informational these days, most applications hard code their port numbers.
> 
> A
> 
> 
> *Attachments:*
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