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I'm trying to share a GnuPG key pair by importing it into each machine. This is how I'm doing it:

gpg --allow-secret-key-import --import secret.gpg.key
gpg --import public.gpg.key

The keys have been exported with -a.

After doing this, the public key is shown correctly when I do a gpg --list-keys, but the private key isn't (gpg --list-secret-keys).

What am I doing wrong?

By the way: I'm doing this with Puppet, so any solution that doesn't require me to type stuff in (--edit-key and the like) would be appreciated.

Stefano Palazzo
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  • Could you elaborate a bit more on what is wrong with the gpg --list-secret-keys output? There's no flag for GPG to mark a key to be default. It just picks the first one in that list to be the default. If you need to change that behaviour, I can provide an answer. – gertvdijk Aug 20 '13 at 12:18

1 Answers1

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To change the GnuPG behaviour on what key it selects on signing/encryption, use the default-key configuration parameter with the key ID as the value.

So, for example, with

$ gpg --list-secret-keys 
/home/gert/.gnupg/secring.gpg
-----------------------------
sec   4096R/13371337 2011-01-01 [expires: 2014-01-01]
uid                  Gert van Dijk (1st key) <name@example.tld>
ssb   4096R/31337313 2011-01-01

sec   4096R/12345678 2013-04-23 [expires: 2014-01-01]
uid                  Gert van Dijk (2nd key) <name@example.tld>
ssb   4096R/87654321 2013-04-23

add a line in ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf:

default-key 12345678

or, alternatively, use the long key ID (recommended as short key IDs can have collisions):

$ gpg --list-secret-keys --with-colon
sec::4096:1:ABCDEFAB12345678:2013-01-01:2014-01-01:::Gert van Dijk (2nd key) <user@example.tld>:::

and add a line in ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf:

default-key ABCDEFAB12345678
gertvdijk
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  • 1
    By default the first one of the list of gpg --list-secret-keys will be used as the default key — is that correct? – Ini Dec 30 '18 at 12:33