Backup process missing something?

[oren]

My laptop's hardware crashed and i am trying to restore my password store on a new laptop. My backup was created using the process documented on the wiki.

I restored the .password-store folder and the gpg keys using the commands on that wiki page:

Restore the pass data folder

cp -r ~/password-store ~/.password-store

Restore the gpg keys

gpg2 --import secret.gpg
gpg --edit-key <KEY_ID>
gpg>trust
enter '5'

but I see the following message:

gpg: decryption failed: No secret key

Here is the output of gpg -k:

gpg -k
/home/oren/.gnupg/pubring.kbx
-----------------------------
pub   rsa4096 2020-02-25 [SC]
      xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
uid           [ultimate] my name  <myname@gmail.com>
sub   rsa4096 2020-02-25 [E]

Any ideas what's going on? is the process of backup missing something? I am not familiar with managing gpg keys so any advice would be appreciated!

[msfjarvis]

How did you export your secret key? gpg --export-secret-keys <key id> is the only way to get our secret keys in a form that can be imported elsewhere.

[oren]

I believe I used the gpg2 --export-secret-keys > secret.gpg command. no key id.

[msfjarvis]

Not passing a key id should dump all your keys into a single file. I just did gpg --export-keys > keys.gpg; gpg --import keys.gpg and it correctly showed me that two secret keys were found but not imported because they exist already. Not really sure how that went wrong on your end.

[oren]

did you follow the wiki commands to restore them?

gpg2 --import keys.gpg
gpg --edit-key <KEY_ID>
gpg>trust
enter '5'

[msfjarvis]

Yes, that's what I wrote above. I did not need to trust the keys because they already existed in my computer, but the exported copy was valid.

[oren]

ok. thanks. at least the docs are accurate.

…

On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 8:33 PM Harsh Shandilya ***@***.***> wrote: Yes, that's what I wrote above. I did not need to trust the keys because they already existed in my computer, but the exported copy was valid. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1248 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAABS5KLYFJL7Y7MPS4VHNTSUQ7ZVANCNFSM4UZCERNA> .

[oren]

I tried the import command again and this time i didn't leave the passphrase empty. now i see my private key and can access the password store. thank you!

[msfjarvis]

Glad to hear you were able to resolve it.