gnupg: Specify a User ID
7 How to Specify a User Id
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There are different ways to specify a user ID to GnuPG. Some of them are
only valid for 'gpg' others are only good for 'gpgsm'. Here is the
entire list of ways to specify a key:
* By key Id. This format is deduced from the length of the string
and its content or '0x' prefix. The key Id of an X.509 certificate
are the low 64 bits of its SHA-1 fingerprint. The use of key Ids
is just a shortcut, for all automated processing the fingerprint
should be used.
When using 'gpg' an exclamation mark (!) may be appended to force
using the specified primary or secondary key and not to try and
calculate which primary or secondary key to use.
The last four lines of the example give the key ID in their long
form as internally used by the OpenPGP protocol. You can see the
long key ID using the option '--with-colons'.
234567C4
0F34E556E
01347A56A
0xAB123456
234AABBCC34567C4
0F323456784E56EAB
01AB3FED1347A5612
0x234AABBCC34567C4
* By fingerprint. This format is deduced from the length of the
string and its content or the '0x' prefix. Note, that only the 20
byte version fingerprint is available with 'gpgsm' (i.e. the SHA-1
hash of the certificate).
When using 'gpg' an exclamation mark (!) may be appended to force
using the specified primary or secondary key and not to try and
calculate which primary or secondary key to use.
The best way to specify a key Id is by using the fingerprint. This
avoids any ambiguities in case that there are duplicated key IDs.
1234343434343434C434343434343434
123434343434343C3434343434343734349A3434
0E12343434343434343434EAB3484343434343434
0xE12343434343434343434EAB3484343434343434
'gpgsm' also accepts colons between each pair of hexadecimal digits
because this is the de-facto standard on how to present X.509
fingerprints. 'gpg' also allows the use of the space separated
SHA-1 fingerprint as printed by the key listing commands.
* By exact match on OpenPGP user ID. This is denoted by a leading
equal sign. It does not make sense for X.509 certificates.
=Heinrich Heine <heinrichh@uni-duesseldorf.de>
* By exact match on an email address. This is indicated by enclosing
the email address in the usual way with left and right angles.
<heinrichh@uni-duesseldorf.de>
* By partial match on an email address. This is indicated by
prefixing the search string with an '@'. This uses a substring
search but considers only the mail address (i.e. inside the angle
brackets).
@heinrichh
* By exact match on the subject's DN. This is indicated by a leading
slash, directly followed by the RFC-2253 encoded DN of the subject.
Note that you can't use the string printed by 'gpgsm --list-keys'
because that one has been reordered and modified for better
readability; use '--with-colons' to print the raw (but standard
escaped) RFC-2253 string.
/CN=Heinrich Heine,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
* By exact match on the issuer's DN. This is indicated by a leading
hash mark, directly followed by a slash and then directly followed
by the RFC-2253 encoded DN of the issuer. This should return the
Root cert of the issuer. See note above.
#/CN=Root Cert,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
* By exact match on serial number and issuer's DN. This is indicated
by a hash mark, followed by the hexadecimal representation of the
serial number, then followed by a slash and the RFC-2253 encoded DN
of the issuer. See note above.
#4F03/CN=Root Cert,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
* By keygrip. This is indicated by an ampersand followed by the 40
hex digits of a keygrip. 'gpgsm' prints the keygrip when using the
command '--dump-cert'.
&D75F22C3F86E355877348498CDC92BD21010A480
* By substring match. This is the default mode but applications may
want to explicitly indicate this by putting the asterisk in front.
Match is not case sensitive.
Heine
*Heine
* . and + prefixes These prefixes are reserved for looking up mails
anchored at the end and for a word search mode. They are not yet
implemented and using them is undefined.
Please note that we have reused the hash mark identifier which was
used in old GnuPG versions to indicate the so called local-id. It is
not anymore used and there should be no conflict when used with X.509
stuff.
Using the RFC-2253 format of DNs has the drawback that it is not
possible to map them back to the original encoding, however we don't
have to do this because our key database stores this encoding as meta
data.
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