- So, bob forgot his passphrase. There is no way to get his keys back without it
- Bob has to delete his secret and public keys, and then generate new keys. Then he has to make sure that everyone who has his public key knows about the change
- First, he deletes his secret key:
[bob@yohost bob]$ gpg --delete-secret-key bob
gpg (GnuPG) 1.0.6; Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions. See the file COPYING for details.
sec 1024D/3240A1F8 2002-12-16 Bob Smith (User Bob)
Delete this key from the keyring? y
This is a secret key! - really delete? y
- Then, he deletes his public key:
[bob@yohost bob]$ gpg --delete-key bob
gpg (GnuPG) 1.0.6; Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions. See the file COPYING for details.
pub 1024D/3240A1F8 2002-12-16 Bob Smith (User Bob)
Delete this key from the keyring? y
- Then, he starts over, and creates a new key. Now his key ring looks like:
[bob@yohost bob]$ gpg --list-keys
/home/bob/.gnupg/pubring.gpg
----------------------------
pub 1024D/DB42A60E 1999-09-23 Red Hat, Inc
sub 2048g/961630A2 1999-09-23
pub 1024D/7776E936 2002-10-04 Mandi Walls
sub 1024g/E0524E3E 2002-10-04
pub 1024D/A9187B27 2003-01-29 Bob Smith (User Bob)
sub 1024g/8938F5F5 2003-01-29
- He hasn't lost the other keys on his keyring, just his old personal key set