Move GPG Keys from One Machine to Another

gpg-key-migration.md

Migrate GPG Keys from One Workstation to Another

Replace [your key] with your key ID

To obtain your key ID

gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG

Which returns something like

/home/angela/.gnupg/pubring.kbx
-------------------------------
sec   rsa4096/[your key] 2018-03-30 [SC]
      ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
uid                 [ unknown] angela (KEY NAME) <user@domain>
ssb   rsa4096/ABCDEFGHIJKL 2018-03-30 [E]

After the key size rsa4096/ is your key ID.

---

Export the key in preparation to move it

gpg --export -a [your key] > gpg-pub.asc

Prepare the secret key for migration (if password protected, you'll be prompted to enter it)

gpg --export-secret-keys -a [your key] > gpg-sc.asc

Find them

ls -l gpg*.asc

Drag the key pair from the current directory to your USB stick or however else you move them.

Once on the new machine, import them

gpg --import gpg-pub.asc

If password protected, you'll be prompted to enter it

gpg --import gpg-sc.asc

If you need to adjust the trust level

gpg --edit-key [your key]

Just a note, this doesn't migrate all keys. If GnuPG is used as ssh-agent, it somehow allows keys within private-keys-v1.d to be included via the sshcontrol file even though ti doesn't show them to any other command including gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG

I'm currently looking for a way to either extract them from there into a normal format...

Did you find a way to export the keys from that file? Facing the same issue right now, as it seems the key was not part of the keyring, but only present as such file. On the new system, I can't see or use it though.