[Gnumed-devel] Re: [GPCG] [e-smith] How to install CVS on your e-smith server

[Ian Haywood]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 04:54:36PM +1000, Horst Herb wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:22, David Guest wrote:
> > David Guest wrote:
> > > It would be fun to put up Tony Lembke's gmKeysDemo.py. It a python
> > > command line program to search and retrieve keys from a pksd server
> [...]
> > Ah gnumed beat me to it.
> >
> > http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/gnumed/gnumed/gnumed/test-area/tlem
> >bke/
> 
> Tony's script does actually more. It can send an email encrypted, looking up
> the recipients key automatically from a local key cache or remote key
> servers.
This is excellent.

However, this has a weakness. Unless the web of trust is very strong, 
its is likely that no signer of the recipients key is in the keyring:
the key cannot be trusted. However, it may be possible to 
establishing trust by downloading more keys establishing a
'trust pathway" i.e X has signed Y has signed Z.

A solution exists: onak 
(http://www.earth.li/projectpurple/progs/onak.html)

onak is an extended keyserver that can caluclate trust pathways 
on-the-spot, and (using a hack I hope to get included in the next 
version) download all the neccessary keys at once.   

Ian Haywood

-- 
PGP public key E750652E at wwwkeys.pgp.net
9BF0 67B7 F84F F7EE 0C42  C063 28FC BC52 E750 652E