I lost my public key! :)

[David Shaw]

On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 09:12:45PM -0400, Brian Minton wrote:
> > On Tue, 22 Oct 2002 23:33:44 -0400, David Shaw said:
> >
> >
> >>All OpenPGP secret keys have a copy of the public key inside them,
> >>and in a worst-case scenario, you can create yourself a new public
> >>key
> >>using the secret key.  Some versions of PGP, in fact, do this
> 
> Which doesn't address the original question, why is the public key
> required for decryption, if the secret key is available, and has all
> the necessary info?  (btw, I guess I was mistaken about the public key
> not being recoverable from the secret key)

It isn't required - the problem you had earlier was a bug.  It's been
fixed now as part of 1.2.1.

In 1.2.1 you do need to use --try-all-secrets to decrypt though, for
various reasons having to do with how GnuPG looks up keys internally.
This is handled in the latest devel version (1.3.1) which creates a
public key automatically from the secret key.

David

-- 
   David Shaw  |  dshaw@jabberwocky.com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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