kmail doesn t sign/encrypt e-mails, broken pipe

Werner Koch wk at gnupg.org
Wed Nov 10 15:41:12 CET 2004


On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 13:42:30 +0100, Erik Wasser said:

> pub   2048R/33EAF336 2002-04-29 Real Name <someone at somewhere.tld>
> sig!         36F3EA33 2002-04-29   [User id not found]

> Stupid question (again): what does *that* mean?

Your key is broken and there is no subkey usable for encryption.  For
a valid key you should get such a listing:

  pub   1024D/9CD9FD55 2000-12-14
  uid                  Joe Random Hacker  
  sig!3        9CD9FD55 2000-12-14  Joe Random Hacker 
  sub   1024g/381701C4 2000-12-14
  sig!         9CD9FD55 2000-12-14  Joe Random Hacker

(gpg 1.2 merges the first "uid" line with the "pub" line)

You can see the user ID with a self-signature and a subkey with the
key binding self-signature. If you do a gpg --list-keys --with-colons
you even get more information:

  pub:f:1024:17:AF82244F9CD9FD55:976803034:::q:::scaESCA:
  uid:f::::976803034::18652B8DFEFDC53FBD2553FC289B6D3FC2033BC0::\
                                               Joe Random Hacker:
  sub:f:1024:16:087DD7E0381701C4:976803037::::::e:

Note the "scaESCA" in the first line.  The capitalized letters say,
the entiere key (primary and subkeys) may be used for: encryption,
signing, certification and authentication.  If you do this for your
key you will notice that there is no E in it.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner





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