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GnuPG generating public/private key pair where public key and Private key are same and not different

rated 0 times [ 0] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 1640 / 1 Year ago, sun, february 12, 2023, 4:01:10

I want to generate GnuPG public private key pairs. I have gpg and not gpg2 installed.So I went to terminal and did:

gpg --gen-key

output:

Please select what kind of key you want:

   (1) RSA and RSA (default)

   (2) DSA and Elgamal

   (3) DSA (sign only)

   (4) RSA (sign only)

I selected 1 Output:

What keysize do you want? (2048)

I selected 4096 Output:

Key is valid for? (0)

I selected 0 Output:

You need a user ID to identify your key; 

the software constructs the user ID

from the Real Name, Comment and Email Address in this form:

"Name Title (some comment) <[email protected]>"



Real name: My Name

Email address: [email protected]

Comment: comment

You selected this USER-ID:

"My Name (comment) <[email protected]>"

Output:

You need a Passphrase to protect your secret key.

I gave passphrase Output:

gpg: key XXXXXXXL marked as ultimately trusted

public and secret key created and signed.



pub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXL 2016-06-09

Key fingerprint = XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXL

uid                  My Name (comment) <[email protected]>

sub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXM 2016-06-09

I added the following line to my ~/.profile:

export GPGKEY=XXXXXXXM

Then to source it I did

killall -q gpg-agent

eval $(gpg-agent --daemon)

export GPGKEY=XXXXXXXM

Next I encrypted it:

gpg --cert-digest-algo=SHA256 --edit-key XXXXXXXM

Output:

Secret key is available.



pub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXM  created: 2016-06-09  expires: never       usage: SC  

                     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate

[ultimate] (1). My Name (comment) <[email protected]>



Command>

I did

addkey

Output:

Please select what kind of key you want:

   (2) DSA (sign only)

   (4) Elgamal (encrypt only)

   (5) RSA (sign only)

   (6) RSA (encrypt only)

I selected 6 Output:

What keysize do you want? (2048)

I selected 4096 Output:

Key is valid for? (0)

I selected 0 Output:

pub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXL  created: 2016-06-09  expires: never       usage: SC  

                     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate

sub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXM created: 2016-06-09  expires: never       

sub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXN created: 2016-06-09  expires: never       usage: E   



[ultimate] (1). My Name (comment) <[email protected]>

Command>

I did:

save

Next I did:

gpg --list-keys

This is my sample output:

pub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXL 2016-06-09

uid                  My Name (comment) <[email protected]>

sub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXM 2016-06-09

sub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXN 2016-06-10

However when I do

`gpg --list-secret-keys`

I get de-to-de the same output with the exception of sec in place of pub:

sec   ABCDE/XXXXXXXL 2016-06-09

uid                  My Name (comment) <[email protected]>

sub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXM 2016-06-09

sub   ABCDE/XXXXXXXN 2016-06-10

I know that the portion after pub ABCDE/ is the public key and the portion after sec ABCDE/ is the private key. So in short, my public key and private key are the same.

Another peculiar scenario is that here three lines start with ABCDE, but the combination has to be different.

How can I get separate public and private keys?

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armis

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2 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago suspengn · Accepted Answer

Finally I managed to solve my problem. Although in a different way.

I installed thunderbird, created an account for my email address. Next I installed enigmail extention. From enigmail setup wizard I created key-pair for my acoount and a revocation certificate.

But here problem was still not gone. I went to enigmail key management then right clicked on my key and selected upload to public key server. But constant error was coming. It was because enigmail was unable to add the keys to my trusted keyring.

So I once again right clicked on my key and selected export key and then enabled export of private key and clicked OK. Let us assume that I had given the name to the output file mykey-pub-sec.asc

Next I went to the terminal and typed:

cd /path/to/the/saved/file

gpg --allow-secret-key-import --import mykey-pub-sec.asc

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --send-key $GPGKEY

Here I replaced $GPGKEY with the key ID

That's it job done