Introduction
The intent of this page is to explain how you can sing a GPG key.
Then, to get connected to the web of trust, go to the keysinging coordination page.
How to
Step 1: Print your key
The printout of your fingerprint must contain the following information:
- Your first name
- Your last name
- Your e-mail addresses (the ones you use with the key)
- The encryption method and the ID of the key (e.g. 4096R/1A2B3C4D5E6F7G8H)
- The fingerprint itself
You can use this function :
gpg -v --fingerprint 1A2B3C4D5E6F7G8H
Usually, you make several printouts on a sheet of paper. It can for example be the size of a business card. You can also use the gpg-key2ps which is part of the signing-party package to create these printouts as:
gpg-key2ps -p a4 1A2B3C4D5E6F7G8H > out.ps
Alternatively, you can print in one column only to avoid printing issues (for extra wide keys):
gpg-key2ps -1 -p a4 1A2B3C4D5E6F7G8H > out.ps
If you go to a key singing party, you will have to send this information beforehand, and they will then print a list for each participant.
Step 2: Sing your key
Start singing your key fingerprints from the very beginning, omitting unreadable, unprintable and unpronounceable characters. If this seems too difficult to perform, consider using festival:
gpg -v --fingerprint 1A2B3C4D5E6F7G8H | festival --tts
Step 3: Consider doing keysigning instead of keysinging
For more information about keysigning, see Keysigning. Doing that may be a bit less fun than doing keysinging, but will help you grow your web of trust.