Take the tour ×  I have made a keypair for my email address
using gnupg. I thought that I should probably keep a backup of
it so that if I lose my desktop computer I can continue using
the same key.  Is this the correct thinking?  How can I export
my private key / the whole pair?  share|improve this question
add comment  1 Answer  Have you tried:  gpg --export-secret-key
That should do it. You might have to give the id of the key you
want to export. And maybe also provide --armor if you want it in
nice ASCII.  You don't need the public key because the public
key can always be trivially generated from the private key.
Keeping a backup is likely a wise idea. I also tend to generate
a revocation signature (the --gen-revoke option) that I don't
publish and keep that backed up too, often in a separate place.
This allows me to revoke the key if I lose it or it becomes
compromised in some other way.  I strongly recommend you you
keep the key backup offline.  share|improve this answer add
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