keylookup(1)

💖 keylookup — the manual, bestie edition 💖

okay so this is the manual page for keylookup(1), and I'm gonna walk you through it like we're texting at 2am, because honestly? this tool deserves main character energy. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

keylookup — go fetch GnuPG keys from keyservers and import them. that's the whole vibe. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

keylookup [options] search-string

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So keylookup is basically a little wrapper around gpg --search, right? It lets you search for keys on a keyserver. 🔍

Then — and this is the cute part — it shows you the list of matching keys, and lets her (yes, the user, that's you bestie) pick which keys get imported into the GnuPG keyring. 💖

And like, for the actual searching and the actual importing? GnuPG itself is the one doing the work. keylookup is just the pretty face out front. 👑

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• --keyserver=keyserver — tell it which keyserver to use. If you don't specify one, it'll go dig through the GnuPG options file looking for a default keyserver to use. And if it can't find one at all? keylookup aborts. no keyserver, no service. 💀
• --port=port — use a port that isn't 11371. that's it, that's the option.
• --frontend=frontend — okay so keylookup can display your search results with 3 different frontends (the original says "frondends" which is sending me 😭). Both whiptail and dialog are interactive and let you actually pick which keys to import. The third one, plain, is non-interactive and just prints the keys to STDOUT — and then you have to call GnuPG yourself, bestie, no one's holding your hand. ✨

If it's available, /usr/bin/dialog is the default. If it's not available but /usr/bin/whiptail is installed, then that's what gets used instead. And if nothing else works, we fall back to plain. resilient queen. 💅

• --importall — skip the whole "which keys do you want" conversation and just import all the keys matching the search-string. When you use this, no frontend is needed at all. efficiency. ⭐
• --honor-http-proxy — just like GnuPG, keylookup will only honor the http_proxy environment variable if you actually pass this option. If you don't pass it, but your GnuPG options file includes it, then keylookup will use it. 👀
• --help — print a brief help message and exit successfully. a little treat. 🍓

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• HOME — used to locate the default home directory.
• GNUPGHOME — if it's set, this directory is used instead of "~/.gnupg".
• GNUPGBIN — if it's set, it's used as the gpg binary instead of gpg.
• http_proxy — only honored when the option --honor-http-proxy is set, or when honor-http-proxy is set in GnuPG's config file. no sneaky proxies otherwise. 🙈

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💜 EXAMPLES 💜

keylookup Christian Kurz

will query your default keyserver for Christian's keys and offer you to import them into your keyring with the dialog frontend (if available).

keylookup --honor-http-proxy --frontend plain wk@gnupg

will query the default keyserver again, now using the http_proxy if the environment variable is defined, and list wk@gnupg's (Werner Koch)'s key on STDOUT.

keylookup --keyserver pgp.mit.edu Peter Palfrader

will now ask the keyserver pgp.mit.edu for my (Peter's) keys and display them for import in dialog.

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🧚 FILES 🧚

• ~/.gnupg/options — GnuPG's options file, where keylookup will take the keyserver and honor-http-proxy values from, if it exists.

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• gpg(1)

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🔥 BUGS 🔥

Please report bugs using the Debian bug tracking system at https://bugs.debian.org/. do it, it's giving responsible citizen. 🫶

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

• Christian Kurz <shorty@debian.org>
• Peter Palfrader <peter@palfrader.org>

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and that's the whole page bestie, no cap, every last flag accounted for. 💖✨

okay so this little keylookup(1) page is dated Jun-2002, and it lives in the keylookup(1) manual — that's the source and version, right there, and it's iconic for a page this old to still be this useful. slay. 💅🎀