multiple self signatures

[David Shaw]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 04:12:04PM -0500, Atom 'Smasher' wrote:
> > I am seeing on my key multiple self signatures after I do any editing
> > to my key.  They are all " sig 3 ".
> >
> > I am useing version " 1.2.4 ", on a windows 2KP system.  Is there a
> > reason for this.  I am not asked if I wish to sign my own key.  I have
> > just started to do editing on my GPG key for the first time.
> >
> > Can I, or should I remove them.  If so which one.
> =============================
> 
> i noticed this myself, after updating my cipher preferences and adding
> bzip2 to my compression prefs.
> 
> i'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong, but my observation is this:
> 
> if i update my preferences, i create a new signature (which
> validates those prefs along with the key associated with them). it
> seems that gpg has enough smarts to *replace* my old signature(s)
> with my new signature(s), so when i'm done editing the key i still
> have one signature per key element (UID, subkey, etc). (when
> updating prefs, we're dealing with the signature on the UID)

Exactly.

> now, if i go and import an old copy of my key, or someone imports my
> new key on top of their old copy of my key, gpg will (of course)
> combine all of the signatures that it can find for the key... this
> creates multiple self-signatures.

Exactly again.

> these extra self signatures shouldn't cause any harm, but
> nonetheless i don't like them. if you want to get rid of them, you
> can run "--edit-key"... then "check" will list the signatures and
> the dates...  then you can do "delsig" and go through the list of
> signatures, deleting the ones you don't want.

Exactly a third time, but note that if you ever refresh your key from
the keyserver, the extra sigs will come back.

> (is there any documentation of "delsig"? i didn't see it in the man page
> that came with 1.2.4)

Oops.  It'll be in 1.2.5.

David