You can un-expire a GPG key.
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:date: 2012-01-13 03:54
:author: tyrel
:category: Tech
:tags: linux, gpg
:slug: 2012-01-13-you-can-un-expire-a-gpg-key
:status: published

Today we had a problem at work on a system. Without getting into too much detail as to give away secrets behind the verbal NDA I am behind, I will just say that it had to do with a GPG public key of mine that was expired on a dev machine, accidentally propagating during install to a production machine.

This key had a sub key as well, so figuring out this was tricky.

To start, you can list your gpg keys like so

``gpg --list-keys``

| This will list keys such as
| ``pub 4096R/01A53981 2011-11-09 [expires: 2016-11-07]``
| ``uid         Tyrel Anthony Souza (Five year key for email.)``
| ``sub 4096R/C482F56D 2011-11-09 [expires: 2016-11-07]``

| To make this not expire, (same steps to change expiration date to another time), you must first edit the key
| ``gpg --edit-key 01A53981``
| You will then see a gpg prompt

``gpg>``

| Type “expire” in and you will be prompted for how long to change it to
| ``Changing expiration time for the primary key.``
| ``Please specify how long the key should be valid.``
| ``        0 = key does not expire``
| ``      <n> = key expires in n days``
| ``     <n>w = key expires in n weeks``
| ``     <n>m = key expires in n months``
| ``     <n>y = key expires in n years``

| You are then done setting the expiration on the primary key, if you have sub key, doing this is as easy as typing
| ``key 1``
| and repeating the expiration step.

To finish and wrap things up, type ``save`` and you are done.