User:Aimilius/Paperkey
Paperkey is a command line tool to export GnuPG keys on paper. It reduces the size of the exported key, by removing the public key parts from the private key. Paperkey also includes CRC-24 checksums in the key to allow the user to check whether their private key has been restored correctly.
Installation
Install paperkeyAUR from the AUR.
Usage
Backup
To create a backup of your GnuPG key, pipe the private key to paperkey:
$ gpg --export-secret-key key-id | paperkey --output paperkey.asc
Restore secret key
To restore the secret key you need to have a file with the paperkey data and the public key. Then run the following command to import the private key to ~/.gnupg
:
$ paperkey --pubring public-key.asc --secrets secret-key-paper.asc | gpg --import
Alternatively, restore the private key to a file:
$ paperkey --pubring public-key.asc --secrets secret-key-paper.asc --output secret-key.asc
Tips and tricks
Print secret key directly
If no --output
argument is given, paperkey will print it's output to stdout
. It's possible to print the key directly without intermediate file, which might have security implications. To do so, install CUPS, and pipe to lpr
:
$ gpg --export-secret-key key-id | paperkey | lpr