How to migrate my encrypted passwords to my new laptop

Question

I'm using pass to store my password. Passwords are stored in ~/.password-store. This has been working for 10 years, but now I have a new laptop. I'm trying to migrate the passwords by copying what I think is required, but it does not work.

I copied the following directories to my new computer.

• ~/.password-store

• ~/.ssh

• ~/.gnupg

Notice that I copied .ssh to get access to my GitHub repo. It is probably not related to pass but honestly I don't know. This approach does not work and pass tells me that there is no private key.

I tried to follow the “Migrating Linux Pass to a New Machine” tutorial, but I was not able to figure out what to do at:

gpg --output private.pgp --armor --export-secret-key username@example

I don't know where private.pgp is supposed to be, and I don't know what username@example is supposed to be on my computer.

Alternative question: which files am I supposed to store in a safe place, in order to recover all my password in case my SDD would be irrecoverable?  I've been praying for 10 years now for my SSD to not fail, because if it does, I'll lose access to EVERYTHING.  So far I prayed strong enough.  :-)

Answer 1

So I eventually figured the problem myself (I think).

On my new computer there was already a .gnupg directory with one default file. I don't remember which one but anyway. When I copied my .gnupg folder from my old, to my new computer, I probably merged the two folders which mean the default file persisted and was not replaced by my old computer file. All other files were copied.

I copied again my .gnupg directory, paying attention to removing everything on my new computer, and it worked.