File: gnupg.info,  Node: kbxutil,  Up: Debugging Tools

14.1.1 Scrutinizing a keybox file
---------------------------------

A keybox is a file format used to store public keys along with meta
information and indices.  The commonly used one is the file
'pubring.kbx' in the '.gnupg' directory.  It contains all X.509
certificates as well as OpenPGP keys.

When called the standard way, e.g.:

   'kbxutil ~/.gnupg/pubring.kbx'

it lists all records (called blobs) with there meta-information in a
human readable format.

To see statistics on the keybox in question, run it using

   'kbxutil --stats ~/.gnupg/pubring.kbx'

and you get an output like:

     Total number of blobs:       99
                    header:        1
                     empty:        0
                   openpgp:        0
                      x509:       98
               non flagged:       81
            secret flagged:        0
         ephemeral flagged:       17

   In this example you see that the keybox does not have any OpenPGP
keys but contains 98 X.509 certificates and a total of 17 keys or
certificates are flagged as ephemeral, meaning that they are only
temporary stored (cached) in the keybox and won't get listed using the
usual commands provided by 'gpgsm' or 'gpg'.  81 certificates are stored
in a standard way and directly available from 'gpgsm'.

To find duplicated certificates and keyblocks in a keybox file (this
should not occur but sometimes things go wrong), run it using

   'kbxutil --find-dups ~/.gnupg/pubring.kbx'