Re: "secret key not available". "unable to sign the tag".

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 15, 2008, 03:57 UTC
Message-ID: <20081115035743.GA19633@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <823128.71540.qm@web37902.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 03:28:44PM -0800, Gary Yang wrote:

> I got errors and warnings when I used "git tag -s my-tag". It says,
> "secret key not available". "unable to sign the tag".

Probably because it can't find your secret key, like it says.

Show 8 quoted lines

> gpg: please see http://www.gnupg.org/faq.html for more information
> gpg: skipped `Gary Yang <gyang@linux123.(none)>': secret key not available
> gpg: signing failed: secret key not available
> error: gpg failed to sign the tag
> fatal: unable to sign the tag
> 
> I ran "gpg --gen-key" and generated keypair. But, still got the same
> error. Please help.

Did the key you generated have the email address "gyang@linux123.(none)"? If not, then that is your problem.

You need to tell git who you are, since it is unable to deduce it from doing host lookups. Try:

  git config --global user.email garyyang6@yahoo.com

or whatever email address you used when you created the key, and then gpg should find it appropriately.

-Peff