Renew GPG

How to renew GPG keys

Renew GPG
Photo by Matthew Henry / Unsplash

The recommended way is use a liveCD, it's a local environment without networking.

I backed up my secret key in a offline environment(USB stick), and I only use it when I need to renew my GPG keys.

Steps

decompress the gnupg backup(.gnupg directory) to any directory, e.g. the /tmp

use gpg --homedir to specify the .gnupg path, e.g. gpg --homedir /tmp/.gnupg --list-keys

edit the key and use expire to extend the expiration date, then save and exit gpg

send key to keyserver, e.g. gpg --homedir ... --send-key xxx

then backup the gpg homedir to the USB stick, eject it.