Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, München Computing and Networking Group

Max-Planck-Institut für Physik - PGP-Keyserver

Extracting a key

1. Select either the ``Index'' or ``Verbose Index'' check box. The ``Verbose'' option also displays all signatures on displayed keys.
2. Type ID you want to search for in the ``Search String'' box.
3. Press the ``Do the search!'' key.
4. The server will return a (verbose) list of keys on the server matching the given ID. (The ID can be any valid argument to a pgp -kv(v) command (e.g. userid/name/...). If you want to look up a key by its hexadecimal KeyID, remember to prefix the ID with 0x.)
5. The returned index will have hypertext links for every KeyID, and every bracket-delimited identifier (i.e. < uwl@mppmu.mpg.de>). Clicking on the hypertext link will display an ASCII-armored version of the listed public key.

• Currently, hypertext links are only generated for the KeyID and for text found between matching brackets. (It's a common convention to put your e-mail address inside brackets somewhere in the key ID string.)
• The search engine is not the same as that used by the pgp program. It will return information for all keys which contain all the words in the search string. A ``word'' in this context is a string of consecutive alphabetic characters. If you don't want to see all these extra matches, you can select ``Only return exact matches'', and only keys containing the specified search string will be returned.
• This algorithm does not match partial words in any case. So, if you are used to specifying only part of a long name, this will no longer work.
• Finding a key on this server does not mean, that this key is reliable. You should ask the key-owner and check the fingerprint.
• Employees of the MPI für Physik have the possibility to get their key signed by the C/N group key "PGP Keyserver <pgp@mppmu.mpg.de>", which you can check here. This signature grants, that the owner could prove his identity and is employed at the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik.