Make a revocation certificate, in case your key is jeopardized, like your forgot your passphrase :)

Published: Wednesday, Dec 26, 2007 Last modified: Wednesday, Oct 2, 2024

gpg -kvc

This should print out some useful information for distributing and verifying your signature. For example:

pub  1024D/A000D5CC 2002-05-18 Kai I Hendry <hendry AT cs.helsinki.fi>

Has some information useful to you. A000D5CC is my public key id which is used as a quick and easy reference to perform various functions with.

gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys A000D5CC

The command above grabs my pub key from a server and imports it quite smartly. DO not to forget your passphrase/password!! I have myself have forgotten the passphrase of my first key and it is extremely annoying for yourself and others. To avoid such an embarrasing situation, make a revocation certificate in advance, using:

gpg --output revcert.asc --gen-revoke A000D5CC

Keep that revcert.asc in a safe place. Maybe even print it out as the GnuPG Keysigning Party HOWTO suggests.
Again using your public id, put some custom headers into your .muttrc. For example, here are mine:

my_hdr X-GPG-Fingerprint: 5A9F A10D 621C 7D24 4624 90F0 ACCB 71F0 A000 D5CC
my_hdr X-GPG-Key: 1024D/A000D5CC