Cannot update expired GPG key with extended expiry date

[Jonty]

My GPG key expired, so I've extended the expiry date for another five years. I cannot find any way to import this updated key into keybase.

The website now insists that I must use the CLI tool to add a key (none of the old curl + gpg tricks seem to be supported).

• Using keybase pgp update results in ▶ ERROR updated key isn't an active key (code 902)
• Using keybase pgp select --multi results in ▶ ERROR updated key isn't an active key (code 902)
• Using gpg --export-secret-key -a 0xB1A5BC141F6BEEE5 | keybase pgp import results in ▶ INFO Key 010151f54bc90f1d8d62a1ca0b1a1b30312efa94580ade406c9d8b4770a0762a83be0a already exists. Only importing the private key.

While the last one looks like it might have done something, the key is still not visible on my profile: https://keybase.io/jonty

I have no idea what else to try!

[kasparsd]

I had the same error even though the keys had not expired. I ended up removing the public key from the account keybase pgp drop <key-id> and then adding it back via keybase pgp select.

[Jonty]

@kasparsd Brilliant, this works!

For anyone else experiencing this, the <key-id> expected by keybase pgp drop is the Keybase Key ID you can obtain from keybase pgp list - it is NOT the PGP key ID!

[hevanaa]

Thanks, I had a similar issue (and in addition, the key wasn't visible in my public profile) and dropping and adding it again fixed it.

[Tugzrida]

What a weird bug. I seem to have the same symptoms as everyone here and in the linked issues: the key has just disappeared from my profile on keybase.io., however my key is not yet due to expire.

Not sure how recently it would've happened. The most recent archive.org scrape of my profile was May 7 2021, and the key was shown then.

The key is showing up with keybase pgp list, but then trying keybase pgp update or keybase pgp select returns ERROR updated key isn't an active key (code 902)

keybase pgp drop followed by keybase pgp select has remedied the issue, but it kinda feels like a database migration glitch or something 🤷🏻‍♂️

[raylu]

I ran into this too. I had a key set up in 2017. I tried going to https://keybase.io/encrypt to encrypt a message to myself but I got

Error: Cannot find a public key for 'raylu'

https://keybase.io/_/api/1.0/user/lookup.json?username=raylu showed my key in them.public_keys.all_bundles, but them.public_keys.pgp_public_keys was empty

$ keybase id raylu
▶ INFO Identifying raylu
✔ public key fingerprint: 86AD 8A28 B07B 3DC8 19EA D5E0 8AE5 9930 FEFD 609B

so it thinks I have a key and

$ keybase pgp select
▶ ERROR You already have a PGP key registered (86AD 8A28 B07B 3DC8 19EA D5E0 8AE5 9930 FEFD 609B)

$ keybase pgp list
Keybase Key ID:  01019a4d295d9e52dd7c51395f851d786775cdeb33deb5e11e06697436ec635f55ff0a
PGP Fingerprint: 86ad8a28b07b3dc819ead5e08ae59930fefd609b

but

$ curl https://keybase.io/raylu/key.asc
SELF-SIGNED PUBLIC KEY NOT FOUND

in the end, keybase pgp drop followed by keybase pgp select fixed things, as others have said