I have generated a public/private key pair with KGPG. For one of my accounts _A_, I have set that key pair for signing and encryption.

Now, if I send a signed email, that works fine. However, if I encrypt the email and send it to the same account, I am not able to read its contents (neither the email in the Inbox, nor the one stored in the Sent folder).



For a second account _B_ I did the same thing with a new key pair. With this one I can encrypt emails and send it to the same account (_B_), and the email is decrypted just fine.


If I send an encrypted email from _A_ to _B_, _B_ can read the mail. However, an email sent from _B_ to _A_ fails, as _A_ is not able to decrypt it.

So, what works:
_B_ > _B_
_A_ > _B_

What does not work:
_A_ > _A_
_B_ > _A_

Both accounts use the correct keys to encrypt the message (a little dialogue is displayed before sending).


What might be the mistake? What should I check for?


Looking at KGPG I have noticed the following:
For account _A_ there is only the key of account _A_ (I figure that's the public key, but I don't know for sure).
For account _B_ there is the key for _B_, as well as the one for _A_.



EDIT: The email contains a PGP/MIME-encrypted message header. When I try to open it with KGPG, it tells me "Decryption of this file failed"

A few ideas -

In kgpg - have both your own accounts got ultimate trust status?

for each of the accounts, in a user konsole, try 'gpg --list-keys yourname@your.domain'. Post the output here, obfuscating addresses enough to make them safe, but keeping the format.

KGPG does read and display the public keys, but you must have the private keys for both of your own accounts on the computer. If you created them there, you should be ok on that.

The problem does sound to be around a private key, or possibly a trust status. Try 'gpg --list-secret-keys'. Do you see both accounts names?

Hey there,

Yes, in KGPG both accounts have ultimate trust status.

Here is the output of the commands:

Code: Select all

$ gpg --list-keys my.name@domain_b.de
pub   2048R/560B52AC 2009-10-14
uid                  My Name <my.name@domain_b.de>
sub   2048R/D828BC6B 2009-10-14

$ gpg --list-keys my.name@domain_a.com
pub   2048R/AFFB748F 2009-10-14
uid                  My Name <my.name@domain_a.com>
sub   2048R/7F9620F6 2009-10-14


The commands gpg --list-keys and gpg --list-secret-keys yield exactly the same output (basically, what you see above).

I'm running out of ideas. One way we could perhaps identify whether there is an actual problem with one of the keys, or whether it's something local, is if you imported my key 'gpg --recv-keys 1E1C9C17' then sent me an encrypted message (to annew at kde dot org) from each of those accounts. If I can read them and reply to them then there is nothing wrong with the keys themselves, and it is a local problem.