Help on Enigmail - Mozilla 1.7.7. with Win XPP

[Dan Mundy]

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> I'm totally new to GPG (I know the concepts behind PGP)

well you can rest easy because gpg is basically a free command line
version of pgp, and the two are fully compatible.

> I use Win XPP + Mozilla 1.7.7. I've recently downloaded enigmail to
> use with Mozilla - as I was advised that Enigmail has most
> functions for a startup user

good choice. i use enigmail for my email encryption and signing with gpg.

> - Lets say I get a signed message - like the ones from this
> "gnupg-users" list - I click on the "pen" ICON (displayed by
> Mozilla) to check the signature - I get a message "public key not
> found" - I proceed to try and download the public key from one of
> the 4 servers listed in Enigmail ~ I suppose defaults as of now in
> Enigmail - I get either a *socket error* or a *key not found error*
>
>
> - How do I proceed further ?
>
> - Is there a better way to import public keys into enigmail ?

i don't see why importing with enigmail would be a problem, but there
are better ways of importing keys than with enigmail.  first, you
could visit a keyserver like http://pgp.mit.edu/ or
http://pgpkeys.pca.dfn.de/, and look up a person or company in there.
you could also find a gpg-compatible keyserver and type the following
into a dos-box:

gpg --keyserver <keyserver of your choice> --recv-keys <key ID, ie
0x12345678>

> - where is the public key ring stored by enigmail ?

the public keyring used by enigmail is the same one that gpg uses. so
find your WinXP user's "Application Data" folder, go to "gnupg" and
the public keyring will be "pubring.gpg" (unless you have it
configured to be elsewhere, and you would know if you did.)

so i hope i helped, and good luck with gpg!

dan mundy
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