PGP - no default secret key

[Lars Noodén]

How do I go about specifying which secret key to use to sign a document? I am trying to eliminate the error below:

gpg --clearsign foobar
gpg: no default secret key: unusable secret key
gpg: foobar: clearsign failed: unusable secret key

[Paddy Landau]

gpg uses the first key in your keyring as the key, unless you specify otherwise.

It looks as though you have not set up a key.

Open Passwords and Encryption Keys. File > New > PGP Key. Create your key, and it should work after that.

[Lars Noodén]

gpg uses the first key in your keyring as the key, unless you specify otherwise.

How do I specify otherwise? There are multiple keys in this keyring.

[Paddy Landau]

How do I specify otherwise? There are multiple keys in this keyring.

Read the manual for all the options.

man gpg

The option you are looking for is either --default-key or --local-user.

gpg --default-key 70A6B53F --clearsign foobar

[Lars Noodén]

The option you are looking for is either --default-key or --local-user.

Thanks. That was it.

I needed to read the part about --clearsign, where it mentions --default-key

[Paddy Landau]

Personally, I would have preferred a GUI method to sign and encrypt files. That would make it easy.

However, I don't know of any GUI utility that does this.

[Lars Noodén]

Personally, I would have preferred a GUI method to sign and encrypt files.

For e-mail on Thunderbird, there is the plug-in engimail. But for general files, I only know of the text-based option.

[Paddy Landau]

there is the plug-in engimail.

I don't think this works on files; only on emails.

[Irihapeti]

If you install seahorse-plugins, you have "sign" and "encrypt" (or "decrypt") as options when you right-click on a file.

[spynappels]

Not much use here, but KDE has Kleopatra which iirc has the option to encrypt or decrypt using a GUI.

Might be wrong though, I use Kleopatra on my Windows partition.