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I created an account in Launchpad and wanted to upload my PGP key in my account. I followed the instructions in Ubuntu Getting Set-Up Guide and Launchpad guide.

Accordingly I received a mail in my GMail account (I had used GMail for registering in Launchpad), and I copied the PGP contents and pasted in the terminal in gpg command. This is the output I got,

user: "abc <def@gmail.com>"
4096-bit RSA key, ID ABCD1234, created 2012-06-15 (main key ID EFGH5678)

gpg: encrypted with 4096-bit RSA key, ID ABCD1234, created 2012-06-15
"abc <def@gmail.com>"

The gpg program is not exiting after this.

After this, the Guide just asks us to go and confirm the PGP key in the Launchpad page. But I don't see any such link there.

Am I doing something wrong here? How does running gpg on my computer inform launchpad if the key is valid or not?

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up vote 5 down vote accepted

The encrypted message you have received contains the instructions for confirming that the PGP key you have registered is yours. In order to follow the instructions, you will have to decrypt it.

After you have pasted your encrypted text into gpg, try ctrl-D ; this informs programs eating STDIN (the terminal input) that you have finished.

Upon Decryption, the decrypted message will have a link, which you must visit and click the Confirm button there.

See : http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2003-October/020558.html

Alternately, you could install the Enigmail addins for Thunderbird and read the mail using that.

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Thanks a lot. Can anyone with the sufficient rights please update this point in the Ubuntu and Launchpad guides I had mentioned in my question. Without this information, it becomes quite confusing for a newcomer. – Hashken Jun 16 '12 at 1:56
    
@lifeless is probably your man for that, since he wrote the page as it is ; hopefully this comment will attract his attention. – Adrian Jun 16 '12 at 17:08
    
@karthik what about the guide confused you? Step 6 of help.launchpad.net/YourAccount/… says to do the decryption in your email client, and the 'quick tip' there describes what and why it was encrypted. Was it the information for using gpg from the command line you needed, or the hint to install enigmail? – lifeless Jun 16 '12 at 18:26
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Have edited relevant wiki page, both clarifying need to pass an EOF (ctrl-D) character to gpg via CLI, and also that Thunderbird supports GPG via the Enigmail extension (which is not installed by default but used by many Ubuntu / Debian developers). – Adrian Jun 17 '12 at 11:23
    
@lifeless Doing ctrl-D is what I missed. It may seem trivial to many, but for a newcomer who is going through the Beginner's Guide, this may prove as a stumbling block. – Hashken Jun 17 '12 at 15:03

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