Thank you, Justin. I've just gone thru your tutorial. It's helpful.
However, I would suggest some more info to be included, which I've tried
hard (with 'man gpg' and google search) but can not yet get a clear
picture of pgp.
Don't blame me posting this in mutt mail listing, and asking your
tutorial too much. :-) Because mutt is the starting point that I learn
PGP. And I believe many people need some basic concepts which are hard
to find explained. (That's pretty weird!) I hope your tutorial can help
newbies like me.
1. There is a confusing set of terms for a key: user id, fingerprint,
public key which refer to sililar/related stuff. Especially the
various forms of specifying a user id.
AFAIK:
fingerprint - an ID for human eye's verification?
public key - a file containing an unreadable value for algorithm
user id (short form, 8 hex digits) - an key ID for your convenience
to specify a key for gpg, not guaranteed to be unique (non-ambiguous)
user id (long form, 16 hex digits) - better ID but who'll use it?
user id (catenated fingerprint digits, 40) - BEST ID (I then found
the 'short form' is the right-most 8 digits of fingerprint.
user id (in the form of your account name, real name or email
address) - these are just 'searchable' string for your key that gpg
can maintain a couple of them in term of 'uid' when you run
'$ gpg --list-keys <any of your id shown above>'.
2. In gpg's key listing, I see, eg.:
pub 1024D/C9C40C31 2001-05-25 Justin R. Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
uid Justin R. Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
uid Justin R. Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
sub 1024g/59FAB546 2001-05-25
But what's the 'sub' entry? What's the ID in it?
I guess the 'uid' entries are just extensions of 'pub' entry, which
contains a key ID plus a 'uid'(the 'name <e-mail>' string). But it takes
me long to get it. Sign! Why don't they make a newbie's life easier?
3. When I get clearer with gpg, I try to make my 'uid' more informative
for others. But I found gpg doesn't provide good maintaining method
to update them. You can not update uid except using adduid/deluid.
You can not(?) change the 'preference' order of those uid's. The
worse, I found I have no way to remove my old uid's in keyserver - they
just accumulate. Strange gpg.
Justin, you are a good tutor. If you can rescue, please help.
best regards,
charlie
On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 05:35:39PM -0500, Justin R. Miller wrote:
> I wrote a guide on using GnuPG with Mutt, including some of the theory
> behind how it works (in a very non-technical way). It also features a
> link to someplace or other that explains some thoughts behind the need
> for encryption and digital signatures. You can see it at:
>
> http://codesorcery.net/mutt/
>
> --
> Justin R. Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> View my website at http://codesorcery.net
> Please encrypt email using key 0xC9C40C31
