Re: dchanges & signatures

[Rob Browning <osiris@cs.utexas.edu>]

>>>>> "B" == "Brian C White" <bcwhite@verisim.com> writes:

B> This was actually a fix because of PGP.  Dchanges apparently tried
B> to sign it as "Brian White <bcwhite@pobox.com>" when I have it
B> written as "Brian C. White <bcwhite@pobox.com>".  I'm not too
B> familiar with PGP, but if dchanges just asked "bcwhite@pobox.com"
B> would that fix the problem I am having?

Probably not.

pgp needs an id which is commonly your name and email address,
but it could be anything that's unique enough so that other people
don't have trouble deciding which public key to use to verify/decode
your stuff when they receive it.

In general your email "From" address should fit the bill, and the main
reason for choosing it over some other id is so that packages which do
automatic pgp verification can just look at an email address to decide
which pgp public key to use to verify/decode an incoming message, or
encode/sign an outgoing message.

I think dchanges uses the maintainer field which is usually your email
address, and auto-pgp (the emacs email interface to pgp) uses the From
line.

I may be wrong about some of this, but I think your headaches in
general will be fewer if you make your From address and your pgp id
the same.  I did that even though using my full name would be more
unique for pgp.

--
Rob