/usr/share/doc/gnupg-doc/GNU_Privacy_Handbook/html/x464.htm is in gnupg-doc 2003.04.06+dak1-1ubuntu1.
This file is owned by root:root, with mode 0o644.
The actual contents of the file can be viewed below.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 | <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<HTML
><HEAD
><TITLE
>Distributing keys</TITLE
><META
NAME="GENERATOR"
CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK
REL="HOME"
TITLE="The GNU Privacy Handbook"
HREF="book1.htm"><LINK
REL="UP"
TITLE="Key Management"
HREF="c236.htm"><LINK
REL="PREVIOUS"
TITLE="Validating other keys on your public keyring"
HREF="x335.htm"><LINK
REL="NEXT"
TITLE="Daily use of GnuPG"
HREF="c488.htm"></HEAD
><BODY
CLASS="SECT1"
BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
TEXT="#000000"
LINK="#0000FF"
VLINK="#840084"
ALINK="#0000FF"
><DIV
CLASS="NAVHEADER"
><TABLE
SUMMARY="Header navigation table"
WIDTH="100%"
BORDER="0"
CELLPADDING="0"
CELLSPACING="0"
><TR
><TH
COLSPAN="3"
ALIGN="center"
>The GNU Privacy Handbook</TH
></TR
><TR
><TD
WIDTH="10%"
ALIGN="left"
VALIGN="bottom"
><A
HREF="x335.htm"
ACCESSKEY="P"
>Prev</A
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="80%"
ALIGN="center"
VALIGN="bottom"
>Chapter 3. Key Management</TD
><TD
WIDTH="10%"
ALIGN="right"
VALIGN="bottom"
><A
HREF="c488.htm"
ACCESSKEY="N"
>Next</A
></TD
></TR
></TABLE
><HR
ALIGN="LEFT"
WIDTH="100%"></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="SECT1"
><H1
CLASS="SECT1"
><A
NAME="AEN464"
>Distributing keys</A
></H1
><P
>Ideally, you distribute your key by personally giving it to your
correspondents.
In practice, however, keys are often distributed by email or some
other electronic communication medium.
Distribution by email is good practice when you have only a few
correspondents, and even if you have many correspondents, you can use
an alternative means such as posting your public key on your World Wide
Web homepage.
This is unacceptable, however, if people who need your public key do
not know where to find it on the Web.</P
><P
>To solve this problem public key servers are used to collect
and distribute public keys.
A public key received by the server is either added to the server's
database or merged with the existing key if already present.
When a key request comes to the server, the server consults its
database and returns the requested public key if found.</P
><P
>A keyserver is also valuable when many people are frequently signing other
people's keys.
Without a keyserver, when Blake sign's Alice's key then Blake would send
Alice a copy of her public key signed by him so that Alice could
add the updated key to her ring as well as distribute it to all of her
correspondents.
Going through this effort fulfills Alice's and Blake's responsibility
to the community at large in building tight webs of trust and thus
improving the security of PGP.
It is nevertheless a nuisance if key signing is frequent.</P
><P
>Using a keyserver makes the process somewhat easier.
When Blake signs Alice's key he sends the signed key to the key server.
The key server adds Blake's signature to its copy of Alice's key.
Individuals interested in updating their copy of Alice's key then consult
the keyserver on their own initiative to retrieve the updated key.
Alice need never be involved with distribution and can retrieve signatures
on her key simply by querying a keyserver. </P
><P
>One or more keys may be sent to a keyserver using the command-line
option <CODE
CLASS="OPTION"
>--send-keys</CODE
>.
The option takes one or more key specifiers and sends the specified
keys to the key server.
The key server to which to send the keys is specified with the
command-line option <CODE
CLASS="OPTION"
>--keyserver</CODE
>.
Similarly, the option
<CODE
CLASS="OPTION"
>--recv-keys</CODE
> is used
to retrieve keys from a keyserver, but the option <CODE
CLASS="OPTION"
>--recv-keys</CODE
>
requires a key ID be used to specify the key.
In the following example Alice updates her public key with new signatures
from the keyserver <TT
CLASS="PARAMETER"
><I
>certserver.pgp.com</I
></TT
> and then
sends her copy of Blake's public key to the same keyserver to contribute
any new signatures she may have added.
<PRE
CLASS="SCREEN"
><TT
CLASS="PROMPT"
>alice%</TT
> <KBD
CLASS="USERINPUT"
>gpg --keyserver certserver.pgp.com --recv-key 0xBB7576AC</KBD
>
gpg: requesting key BB7576AC from certserver.pgp.com ...
gpg: key BB7576AC: 1 new signature
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: new signatures: 1
<TT
CLASS="PROMPT"
>alice%</TT
> <KBD
CLASS="USERINPUT"
>gpg --keyserver certserver.pgp.com --send-key blake@cyb.org</KBD
>
gpg: success sending to 'certserver.pgp.com' (status=200)</PRE
>
There are several popular keyservers in use around the world.
The major keyservers synchronize themselves, so it is fine to
pick a keyserver close to you on the Internet and then use it
regularly for sending and receiving keys.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="NAVFOOTER"
><HR
ALIGN="LEFT"
WIDTH="100%"><TABLE
SUMMARY="Footer navigation table"
WIDTH="100%"
BORDER="0"
CELLPADDING="0"
CELLSPACING="0"
><TR
><TD
WIDTH="33%"
ALIGN="left"
VALIGN="top"
><A
HREF="x335.htm"
ACCESSKEY="P"
>Prev</A
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="34%"
ALIGN="center"
VALIGN="top"
><A
HREF="book1.htm"
ACCESSKEY="H"
>Home</A
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="33%"
ALIGN="right"
VALIGN="top"
><A
HREF="c488.htm"
ACCESSKEY="N"
>Next</A
></TD
></TR
><TR
><TD
WIDTH="33%"
ALIGN="left"
VALIGN="top"
>Validating other keys on your public keyring</TD
><TD
WIDTH="34%"
ALIGN="center"
VALIGN="top"
><A
HREF="c236.htm"
ACCESSKEY="U"
>Up</A
></TD
><TD
WIDTH="33%"
ALIGN="right"
VALIGN="top"
>Daily use of GnuPG</TD
></TR
></TABLE
></DIV
></BODY
></HTML
>
|