decrypt encrypted gpg file using external secret key

encryption gnupg
Mohammed Shannaq picture Mohammed Shannaq · Jan 31, 2012 · Viewed 14.4k times · Source

I encryptd a file using gpg, now I want to decrypt the file.

Is there any way to decrypt the file without need to import the secret file?

We have the secret key in a file called key.sec; can we pass the secret file to gpg as a parameter (when we run the decrypt command from the bash command line) to use when decrypting the encrypted file? Or must we import the secret key then decrypt the encrypted files?

Answer

sarnold picture sarnold · Jan 31, 2012

You must add the secret key to a keyring. From the gpg(1) documentation:

   --no-default-keyring
          Do not add the default keyrings to the list of
          keyrings. Note that GnuPG will not operate without any
          keyrings, so if you use this option and do not provide
          alternate keyrings via --keyring or --secret-keyring,
          then GnuPG will still use the default public or secret
          keyrings.

You could --import --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring temporary to import the key, use --secret-keyring temporary when decrypting the content, then delete the ~/.gnupg/temporary.gpg file when you're done. But that's just a work-around.

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