At 08:13 8/3/95, Adam J. Gerstein wrote:

Sorry to bother y'all with such an amateur question, but I can't find this in TFM, so I figured I'd ask those who are more in the know.....

Anyway, I'm considering revoking my public key because it's been out there a while and I'm feeling the urge to change to a larger key, but I'm not clear on how to revoke the old one. Do I just make a text file with my new key in it, explain that I'm revoking the old one, sign it with my new key and then post it to the list? Or do I just send it to a keyserver?

Again, I'm sorry to be asking y'all about something so easy. I don't want to start a whole new thread about this, so if you've got something helpful to add, please send it via private mail.

There is no need to revoke the old key - you just create a new key with both the old and new keys and send it to the KeyServer. The normal PGP "Default" when there are more than one key with the same Email Address is to use the last one (which would be last in the keyring as well as have the latest date). By leaving the old key as NOT revoked it can still be used but will tend to be replaced by the new longer key as people get your key from the Server. If you DO want to revoke the old key, you just send the Revocation Certificate to the KeyServer along with the new longer key (but note that then, I think you will not be able to decode messages sent with the old key).