Subject: Re: Documentation of PGP 2.6.x and PGP 5.x Keyring File Format

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 09:55:58 -0400

On Fri, 11 Sep 1998, Thorsten Maly wrote:

> Does anybody know where I can find documentation/developer notes on the 
> Keyring File Format for PGP 2.6.x or PGP 5.x. This aspect does not seem
> to 
> be covered in the draft, nor could I find any information on the web. 

The overall format is in 11.1:

----------
11. Enhanced Key Formats

11.1. Key Structures

   The format of an OpenPGP V3 key is as follows.  Entries in square
   brackets are optional and ellipses indicate repetition.

           RSA Public Key
              [Revocation Self Signature]
               User ID [Signature ...]
              [User ID [Signature ...] ...]

   Each signature certifies the RSA public key and the preceding user
   ID. The RSA public key can have many user IDs and each user ID can
   have many signatures.

   The format of an OpenPGP V4 key that uses two public keys is similar
   except that the other keys are added to the end as 'subkeys' of the
   primary key.

           Primary-Key
              [Revocation Self Signature]
              [Direct Key Self Signature...]
               User ID [Signature ...]
              [User ID [Signature ...] ...]
              [[Subkey [Binding-Signature-Revocation]
                      Primary-Key-Binding-Signature] ...]

---------

A keyring file is just a bunch of these concatenated together, i.e.
primary keys followed by the other subpackets.

Also see:

http://www.chem.swin.edu.au/~graeme/pgformat/

particularly public key ring overall structure.  There are postscript
versions of this on the net elsewhere, but I don't have a URL handy.