Re: [Duplicity-talk] symmetric key, or public gpg key?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Chris Poole <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
> I had planned to just use my gpg key for encryption.
> Now I'm wondering, will performance be better with a symmetric key?
> Even when I use my public key, it still asks for me a passphrase anyway.

With GPG a symmetric key is always used for encryption, but in public
key mode the symmetric key is random and is stored using the public
key.

Because the key should be very small compared to your data the
performance difference should not normally be measurable.

The advantage of public keyed backups is immense: it means your backup
process can run without any knowledge of the key, the key is only
needed for recovery.