[lug] pgp and gpg compatibility

[Michael J. Pedersen]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 12:36:19PM -0600, C Menzes wrote:
> i am having some issues importing pgp created public keys into my gpg
> keyring. i am wondering if this is because gpg does not support IDEA? is
> this correct? do i need to run two seperate encryption apps depending on
> who is sending me information?

This will hardly be a final, definitive answer on the topic, but here's the
main thing:

gpg does not natively support idea, due to it's status as a patented
algorithm. pgp, being the commerical product that it is, does have support for
the idea algorithm. However, this is neither here nor there. This is a session
level algorithm, rather than a public key one, and is not used in any fashion
with the public keys.

The issue that you have is likely to be one instead of RSA compatibility. RSA
just attained patent free status within the past 3 months, which means that
gpg has only had this support for less than three months (officially. There
were other ways around this mess before then, though).

The likely cause does lend itself to a simple solution, at least: Get the
latest version of gpg, version 1.0.4, from any of your usual choice of places,
including (but not limited to):

	Your distribution vendor
	http://www.gnupg.org
	Any mirror site (http://www.gnupg.org/mirrors.html)

And then try the imports. Should that fail, you've got some more serious
issues than that going on, and I'd need to know which version of gpg you're
using, what modules you have loaded, and what keys you are trying to import
(and from where). Most specifically, the output of the following commands
would help:
	gpg --version
	uname -a

Hope this helps out somewhat, at least.

-- 
Michael J. Pedersen
My GnuPG KeyID: 4E724A60        My Public Key Available At: wwwkeys.pgp.net
My GnuPG Key Fingerprint: C31C 7E90 5992 9E5E 9A02 233D D8DD 985E 4E72 4A60
GnuPG available at http://www.gnupg.org
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