Trying to add PPA repo, stuck at GPG decryption

Question

First off, it should be out there that there are no docs. you basically have to figure everything out yourself. And the little info there is is convoluted, cryptic. basically lazy.

I want to add software to the ubuntu/debian/mint/linux workd, specifically FAF.

On my launchpad account, I noticed there was this :

I figured this would come into play and I might as well start taking care of it now.

as I understand it this is actually crucial to the process of creating an publishing to a PPA.

That yellow edit button lead to here :

and step one led here :

some googling later I followed this process :

1. open "Passwords and keys"

2. select "GnuPG keys"

3. click the "+"

4. select "PGP Key"

5. filled it out like so :

which left me with this :

6. I then opened up "edit" -> "preferences" and changed it's settings to upload keys instead of not uploading keys. I also ticked the two boxes below :

7. I then went into "Remote" -> "Sync and publish keys...", and clicked on "Sync"

8. I then waited 5-10 minutes

9. then on the launchpad site I entered my key's fingerprint found by right-clicking on your key then opening it's properties then going to the details tab :

after clicking "import" on the launchpad site, there was a blue box stating that I received an email with confirmation link to be decrypted :

I went to my mail, I should mention I use webmail, specifically hotmail.

I found the mail in my unwanted bin and moved it to trusted senders and opened it and indeed the mail features a chuck of encrypted data.

I tried decrypting it by saving the chunk to a file called file.txt and in terminal using :

gpg --decrypt --force-mdc --no-mdc-warning file.txt

but I am met with

gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found.
gpg: decrypt_message failed: Unknown system error

Is my attempt to decrypt it the right method?

how do I decrypt this message?

Keys and Passwords doesn't seem to provide a means to do so.

Answer 1

I figured it out :

as it happens the

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----

and

-----END PGP MESSAGE----- 

are actually wanted in the block that you translate.

so copy the whole block received in your email :

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

*********************************/****************************
*******/********************************************/*********
 *****/********************************** 
 *****/*/************
=****
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

save it to a file :

file.gpg

then in terminal :

gpg --decrypt file.gpg

you'll have to type in the password you selected when creating the key, then you'll get an output ending in :

Please go here to finish adding the key to your Launchpad account:

    https://launchpad.net/token/*****************

copy the link and paste it into your favorite web browser, you'll then be asked to confirm the adding of this key to your account, select "confirm", and you'll be greeted wit this message :