Quick GPG guide

Note: If gpg2 gives you error about invalid/unknown/etc. command, use gpg instead.

What do you need:?

Linux (Debian based distributions)

You need at least package gnupg, but I recommend installing packages icedove enigmail pinentry pinentry-curses pinentry-gtk2 pinentry-qt4 signing-party and gnupg2.

aptitude install gnupg gnupg2 icedove enigmail pinentry-curses pinentry-gtk2 pinentry-qt4 signing-party gnupg2

Mac OS X

You need at least GPG-tools, but I also recommend you to install Thunderbird and Enigmail.

Windows

You need at least GPG4Win, but I recommend installing Thunderbird and Enigmail too.

Step 1

This depends are you generating a new key or importing old key.

Step 1: Generating a new key

Open terminal (or cmd.exe if you are using Windows) and run

gpg2 –gen-key

Notes:

When you are asked for key size, enter the maximum size.
When you are asked for email address, leave it empty. We will add it later.

Adding new UIDs (User IDentities)

First you need to find out the ID of the key, which you just created. You can see it with two commands.

gpg2 –list-keys

gpg2 –fingerprint

The second command also shows the key fingerprint which is usually used to identify the key. Note that you can see both keyid formats in fingerprint. The last eght characters in keyid are the short format and the last sixteen characters are the long format. If you want to see the long keyid, run

gpg2 –list-keys –keyid-format long

Now add the uid with the following commands:

gpg2 –edit-key KEYID

and enter command:

adduid

and you are asked for name and email address again. This time you can give them both.

If that UID which has only your first name isn’t the first UID, select it by giving command, which is the number of the UID, for example:

2

and * appears to that UID to tell you that that UID is selected. Now give command

primary

to make it the primary UID again.

Now you can exit from GPG with

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