Can I use GnuPG connect to PGP public key servers?

1

I use gpg 1.4.19 on Windows.

Can I communicate with the server directly from the command line? I tried this many things, but nothing worked:

Tried:

>gpg --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu --search-keys vivarto@gmail.com

And got this

gpg: searching for "vivarto@gmail.com" from hkp server pgp.mit.edu
gpg: system error while calling external program: No such file or directory
gpg: WARNING: unable to remove tempfile (out) `C:\Users\Vivarto\AppData\Local\Temp\gpg-5E2480\tempout.txt': No such file or directory
gpg: no handler for keyserver scheme `hkp'
gpg: keyserver search failed: keyserver error

Then I tried:

>gpg hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net --search-keys vivarto

And got this:

usage: gpg [options] [filename]

I was able to connect to MIC server using email. I don't know how to do that with the pool.sks-keyservers.net server.

Would greatly appreciate any help. Thank you. Vivarto

Vivarto

Posted 2015-12-11T15:24:14.900

Reputation: 165

Answers

1

I know this works on Linux...

From the "system error while calling external program: No such file or directory" error it looks like your gpg isn't fully installed or configured. Searching for that error finds this potentially helpful line:

There should be a program named gpgkeys_hkp.exe in the same directory as gpg.exe

Where's your gpgkeys-anything .exe file?

Maybe you need to reinstall or do a full install of gpg

Xen2050

Posted 2015-12-11T15:24:14.900

Reputation: 12 097

Thank you, indeed I did not have the gpgkeys files. Now I added them. I can get the info from the MIT server, but this one >gpg hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net --search-keys vivarto Is still not working.

Here are my executable:

12/09/2015 06:26 PM 965,120 gpg.exe 02/27/2015 10:48 AM 72,704 gpgkeys_finger.exe 02/27/2015 10:48 AM 86,528 gpgkeys_hkp.exe 02/27/2015 10:48 AM 43,008 gpgkeys_ldap.exe

Anyway, this is already a huge improvement that I can communicate with MIT key server. Thank you. – Vivarto – 2015-12-11T21:18:33.463

Sorry for the atrocious formatting. Have no idea how to make it look nice. – Vivarto – 2015-12-11T21:24:58.493

Formatting in comments is very limited, pretty much bold, italic, code & links IIRC. The help has more, well... help :-) Maybe you're missing an option to tell gpg to use a different server? gpg on linux uses --keyserver [server] so try it in front of the server. And if the answer works (or is just helpful) please do select/check-mark it (&/or upvote - the up arrow to the left), thanks – Xen2050 – 2015-12-11T22:45:16.860

Thank you this works:

gpg --keyserver hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net --search-keys vivarto@gmail.com

I have already upvoted last time, and I cannot do it again. – Vivarto – 2015-12-12T03:43:31.117

Asked: 2015-12-11T15:24:14.900

Viewed: 572 times

Active: 2015-12-11T16:08:24.633