Keyserver Question

Gpg4win help-en
1

I noticed an odd thing when looking up some keys on the keyserver. I have Enigmail set to use hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net as the first keyserver in the list (and checked the box to always use the first keyserver). When I searched for an old key of mine (from a long gone email address) it came up with 3 keys. When did the same query using Kleopatra which uses hkp://keys.gnupg.net as its only keyserver, it only found 2. I was under the impression that this keyserver was an alias for the first one so should (IMO) provide the same results.

So my question is, there a ā€œpreferredā€ keyserver to use for both?

Thanks

2

Hi Mark,
there is no preferred key-server. Note that both addresses are pools, so even if you use the same, they may get end up on different servers that may give different results. :wink:

Regards,
Bernhard

3

Hi Bernhard,

Thanks for the clarification. That is interesting they come back with different results as the keys in I looked up are literally over a decade old.

Anyway I will keep that in mind that if I donā€™t find a key on one server to try another.

4

Hi Mark,

to further analyse this, you would need to use the servers directly (and not the ā€˜poolsā€™)
and say which pubkeys you are trying to look up. :wink:

Iā€™m not sure if it is worth the effort, as the public key-server are just a way of discovering pubkeys and it is not the only way. We believe that WKD (see wiki.gnupg.org/WKD) can be a great addition which allows for a much improved user experience.

Regards,
Bernhard

5

That makes sense. It could just be an odd one in the pool. I will take a look at that WKD wiki.

Thanks