Generating a GPG key in a script

In this post we are going to learn how to generate a GPG key without having to answer prompts so it can be added to a script if desired.

We start by creating a file where we’ll write the details for our key. This will be the content of the file:

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%echo Generating GPG key
Key-Type: default
Key-Type: RSA
Key-Length: 3072
Subkey-Type: RSA
Subkey-Length: 3072
Name-Real: Carlos Sanchez
Name-Email: carlos@sanchez.mex
%no-protection
%commit
%echo done

And then we can use this command to generate the key:

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gpg --batch --gen-key <file path>

We can find all the options for generating the key in unattended key generation documentation.