[wellylug] gpg: signing failed: secret key,not,available

[Adam Bogacki]

Thanks .. the instructions telling me to create an 'options' file in
.gnupg were probably a bit old.
I transferred the 'default key' instructions to gpg.conf so
~/.gnupg/gpg.conf is now

> # FILE CREATED BY SEAHORSE
>
> default-key 886EF91C
.. and /home/adam/.gnupg/gpg.conf is

> # FILE CREATED BY SEAHORSE
>
> gpg-agent-info /home/adam/.gnome2/seahorse-aKmZLA/S.gpg-agent:8512:1
> use-agent
>
> default-key 886EF91C
.. the conf files having been created by seahorse before I set up gpg.

Also, I get the following ..

> Tohunga:~/.gnupg# ls -la
> total 40
> drwx------  2 root root 4096 2008-10-15 16:57 .
> drwxrwx--- 82 root root 4096 2008-10-15 17:00 ..
> -rw-------  1 root root   51 2008-10-15 15:18 gpg.conf
> -rw-------  1 root root 7704 2008-10-04 17:52 pubring.gpg
> -rw-------  1 root root 7704 2008-10-04 17:52 pubring.gpg~
> -rw-------  1 root root  600 2008-10-04 18:05 random_seed
> -rw-------  1 root root 1315 2008-10-04 17:52 secring.gpg
> -rw-------  1 root root 1280 2008-10-04 17:52 trustdb.gpg
.. and

> Tohunga:/home/adam/.gnupg# ls -la
> total 48
> drwx------   2 adam adam  4096 2008-10-15 17:00 .
> drwxrwx--- 195 adam adam 12288 2008-10-15 16:32 ..
> -rw-------   1 adam adam   130 2008-10-15 15:36 gpg.conf
> -rw-------   1 adam adam 11980 2008-10-05 12:24 pubring.gpg
> -rw-------   1 adam adam 11980 2008-10-05 12:24 pubring.gpg~
> -rw-------   1 adam adam     0 2007-03-09 19:23 secring.gpg
> -rw-------   1 adam adam  1200 2008-10-05 12:24 trustdb.gpg
.. which in my home directory shows an empty 'secring.gpg' file,
although it has 1315 bytes in ~/.gnupg .. possibly explaining why it
tells me that
"gpg: signing failed: secret key not available" when I use a program
in /home/adam ..

I read somewhere about the need to import and export (secret ?) keys.
I don't know
if that's relevant but it strikes me that I could just copy
'secring.gpg' from ~/.gnupg
What would be the best way of doing this ?

Adam Bogacki,
afb at paradise.net.nz