Centralizing Private and Public Keys From Multiple Boxes with "-user" Switch

[David Shaw]

On Apr 29, 2011, at 2:56 PM, Ted Zatopek wrote:

> 
> Is it possible to have multiple private keys in use on the same keyring?
> 
> We have a GPG installation on two different boxes (with one private key in
> use on each) and both boxes have reached end of life and need to be
> decomissioned.   
> 
> We use GPG to encrypt files that we put to the seperate customer FTP sites.  
> They decrypt the files and process them.
> 
> We created a different private\public key combination for each box.   Each
> box also has a customer specific public key that we've imported into the
> keyring.  
> 
> We are centralizing our FTP transmissions to one new box.
> 
> It looks to me that it's possible to have two private keys in use on the
> same keyring and that you can specify which key to use when you are
> encrypting by using the "-user" switch in your encryption command.
> 
> Is that the way it works or am I barking up the wrong tree here?   Maybe I'm
> missing something fundamental?

Nope, that's exactly how it works.  Note that the option is "--local-user" (or "-u"), and not "--user" though.

David