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Checking for existing GPG keys

Before you generate a GPG key, you can check to see if you have any existing GPG keys.

In this article

Supported GPG key algorithms

GitHub Enterprise supports several GPG key algorithms. If you try to add a key generated with an unsupported algorithm, you may encounter an error.

  • RSA
  • ElGamal
  • DSA
  • ECDH
  • ECDSA
  • EdDSA

Note: GPG does not come installed by default on OS X or Windows. To install GPG command line tools, see GnuPG's Download page.

  1. Open TerminalTerminalGit Bash.

  2. Use the gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG command to list GPG keys for which you have both a public and private key. A private key is required for signing commits or tags.

    $ gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG

    Note: Some GPG installations on Linux may require you to use gpg2 --list-keys --keyid-format LONG to view a list of your existing keys instead. In this case you will also need to configure Git to use gpg2 by running git config --global gpg.program gpg2.

  3. Check the command output to see if you have a GPG key pair.

Further reading

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