gnupg: Getting errors trying to gpg --gen-key

Question

I have tried deleting my .gnupg directory but the error returns.

I get this:

gpg: lookup_hashtable failed: eof
gpg: lookup_hashtable failed: eof
gpg: upd_hashtable: read failed: eof
gpg: trust record 2, type 12: write failed: eof
gpg: Error: The trustdb is corrupted.
gpg: You may try to re-create the trustdb using the commands:
gpg:   cd ~/.gnupg
gpg:   gpg2 --export-ownertrust > otrust.tmp
gpg:   rm trustdb.gpg
gpg:   gpg2 --import-ownertrust < otrust.tmp
gpg: If that does not work, please consult the manual

I tried following the advice thrown out by the error and that doesn't work either. Tried Googling the problem but nothing comes up for "lookup_hastable".

I also installed seahorse and have my ssh keys stored in seahorse. Could there be confict going on with seahorse?

I'm running gpg --gen-key from my normal user account and not trying to do anything fancy: just create a standard gpg key.

Answer 1

I faced a similar issue with lookup_hashtable failing due to Unknown system error instead.

I figured it happened after importing a private key through gpg (and not gpg2) using gpg --allow-secret-key-import --import private.key

After setting trust level following this post, the error was gone.

Answer 2

I had the same problem. What is important to realize, is that there are two main versions of GnuPG ('classic' and 'stable', and also there is a 'modern' 2.1): gpg and gpg2 (on Fedora Core they are provided by packages gnupg and gnupg2 respectively).

I searched the Internet about trustdb extensively, removed ~/.gnupg, but could find very little information and that did not help.

Since in my OS repository there was an old version of gpg, I downloaded a 'modern' gpg from the official site. There was a problem with libgrypt, I needed to install a newer library version for gpg to work. When I did it manually, my system refused to boot at all. I think I'll fix that soon, but now I work from another laptop.

Finally I realized that there is a package gnupg2 and I used the command gpg2 instead of gpg. That worked flawlessly. You may set a bash alias gpg=gpg2 in your .bash_profile if you wish to forget about numbers at all.