Another bug, can't export subkeys or private keys

Andrew Gallagher andrewg at andrewg.com
Mon Jun 1 22:39:11 CEST 2026


On 01/06/2026 20:08, Steve Sawczyn via Gnupg-users wrote:
> In the interest of learning and understanding, is there a use case where 
> one might actually want to export a sub-key without exporting the 
> primary key?

There are plenty of use cases where you want to export only the 
*private* subkey, where the primary key material stays on a more secure 
device or even offline, while the private subkey material is used on a 
daily basis. I'm not aware of any use case where you would want to 
export only the public subkey, and it would not be usable without its 
primary in any case.

A



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