General newbe questions using GnuPG
Steve M. Fabac, Jr.
smfabac at att.net
Thu Apr 7 22:57:33 CEST 2005
As a newbe, I have scanned the GnuPG FAQ looking for help on the question
of configuring GnuPG for encrypting and exchanging files between GnuPG 1.4.1
and a client site running GPG on AiX.
I am running GnuPG 1.4.1 on my end.
My client running PGP 6.52 on AIX.
I generated my key pair taking the defaults when prompted and
used gpg --armor --export KeyID > testkey.pub
In the FAQ, the section 5.1 (shown below) has no corresponding section on
"How can I encrypt a message with PGP so that GnuPG is able to decrypt it?
> 5. COMPATIBILITY ISSUES
>
> 5.1) How can I encrypt a message with GnuPG so that PGP is able to decrypt it?
As a newbe, I have not got a clue on what choices to make running
gpg --gen-key to make the necessary PGP compatible public key.
On my system, I get:
Please select what kind of key you want:
(1) DSA and Elgamal (default)
(2) DSA (sign only)
(5) RSA (sign only)
Your selection? 1
DSA keypair will have 1024 bits.
ELG-E keys may be between 1024 and 4096 bits long.
What keysize do you want? (2048)
When I provide the key to my client and he uses it to encrypt
a test message using PGP 6.5 on AIX, I get the following
when I try to decrypt it with GnuPG:
[smf] unix!/u/smf/test $ gpg --decrypt testfile.txt.pgp | head
gpg: [don't know]: invalid packet (ctb=6f)
Additionally: The key pair I generated was a test pair using
a non existing user name, a random comment, and bogus
e-mail. (This test key is to be replaced with a production
key with appropriate name, comment, and e-mail ID after testing
is complete). I then imported the test public key on my
office system and signed the public test key with my
private key for my e-mail ID. I exported the signed key
with: gpg --armor --export keyid > testkey2.pub and sent it via
email to my client.
I can only trust that he did the appropriate steps on his
AIX box to import the key and generate a test encrypted
message. The result of trying to decrypt the test message
on the production system is shown above.
When I use the signed public key on my office system to
encrypt a test file and transfer it to the production
system, I can decrypt the message without problem.
--
Steve Fabac
S.M. Fabac & Associates
816/765-1670
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