GPG key cannot be found

Question

GPG key cannot be found

RuijieYu opened this issue 4 years ago · 5 comments

Not sure if this is the best place for it, but I cannot pull your GPG key. I looked at several top-searched sites including gnupg.net, sks-keyservers.net and ubuntu.com, none of which can find your key. The fact that I can still post this issue shows that I am connected to the internet and the only explanation to the problem is that your key is somehow pulled down from these keyservers.

Answer 1 · 2020-10-07T09:13:57.000Z

Thanks for the report, I'll look into it.

Answer 2 · 2020-10-07T10:09:09.000Z

I am unable to confirm this. My first check was to Ubuntu's key server:

$ gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com --search-key caleb@alerque.com
gpg: data source: http://162.213.33.8:11371
(1)     Caleb Maclennan <caleb@alerque.com>
          4096 bit RSA key 63CC496475267693, created: 2014-07-31
Keys 1-1 of 1 for "caleb@alerque.com".  Enter number(s), N)ext, or Q)uit > 1
gpg: key 63CC496475267693: "Caleb Maclennan <caleb@alerque.com>" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:              unchanged: 1

Looks like it is there to me. It also shows up online, where the current expiration date of 2022-02-16 is also visible, so it's current.

It also is showing up online from keys.gnupg.net. pools.sks-keyservers.net is just redirecting me to keys.gnupg.net. I also checked the venerable pgp.mit.edu and my key seems to be there too.

Is it possible that you are trying to fetch keys via HKP/HKPS protocols but those ports are being blocked? You may try using HTTPS instead to see if you can load keys that way. Are you able to find and retrieve other people's keys?

Answer 3 · 2020-10-07T11:36:24.000Z

OK after a bit of further investigation, I found that the issue is twofold. One is that for some reason gpg --recv-keys 63CC496475267693 is unsuccessful until I specify a keyserver to use; other is that the key URL from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/unofficial_user_repositories does not return anything, which strengthened my belief that the key had become unavailable. After I have specified the keyserver, I was able to pull your public keys from the keyserver. Now I just need to figure out what happens when I leave the keyserver unspecified, but on your end things should be all set.
Thanks.

Answer 4 · 2020-10-07T11:44:53.000Z

Here are some peculiarities for different keyservers' website that I have found:
for https://keyservers.ubuntu.com and https://key.gnupg.net, using 0xKEYID (note the 0x) seems to be mandatory; if 0x is missing, it returns "not found";
for https://pgp.mit.edu, using 0xFINGERPRINT (note the 0x) seems to be mandatory; if 0x is missing, it returns "not found".
I was about to investigate 0xKEYID for your public key, but apparently pgp.mit.edu returns 502/503 for me, so I cannot proceed further.

Answer 5 · 2020-10-07T12:22:27.000Z

Thanks for the follow up. The pgp.mit.edu server does seem to be having problems. Even the link that I posted my comment above does not work for me now, 2 hours later. I'm getting (randomly) either 5-10 second page loads, a timeout error, or a proxy error. If their server issues continue beyond a day or so maybe I'll change the Wiki page to point to a different key server.

If there is anything else I can do to make it more accessible let me know, but it seems to be posted okay the issue is key-servers and their various idiosyncrasies. Given the way key propagation works I think it should be available anywhere you can successfully pull any other key, but the protocol and format nuances are unique to each key platform.