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List:       pgp-keyserver-folk
Subject:    Re: 0.9.3: The incredible shrinking keyring
From:       Marcel Waldvogel <mwa () tik ! ee ! ethz ! ch>
Date:       1998-06-23 12:55:25
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On 22 Jun 1998, Marc Horowitz wrote:
> Marcel Waldvogel <mwa@tik.ee.ethz.ch> writes:
> >> Can anyone explain what's happening here? Is there some garbage
> >> appended to the end when you do a "pksclient . get x asbid"
> >> or "pksclient . get x ab"? (It does look like there are still
> >> UserIDs in the end of the keyring) The idea of garbage is
> >> supported by the fact that a "kxa" of the 191MB keyring results
> >> in a 167MB ASCII armor file (shrinking, not growing!).
> >> 
> >> Interestingly, the 145MB keyring also ASCII armors to 167MB,
> >> which gives more hints on that fact.
> 
> You didn't read the man page :-)
[Man extract page deleted]
> the 's' flag bypasses the armoring.  In addition, armoring adds
> 33% overhead, and 146*4/3=193.  So, my guess is that before you
> added those other keyrings, you extracted w/ armor, and after,
> you didn't, hence the shrinkage.

Sadly, the explanation is not as easy. On both command lines I
already do have a "b" flag, so binary is forced anyway. And also
the files look pretty much binary.

> The kxa program will read either armored or non-armored files,
> so the similar output in either case is not suprising
> 
> I'm not sure where the 167mb file comes from.  when I run kxa on
> an ascii-armored file, it adds a Comment: field, and that's it.

To make myself more clear: I have two *binary* keyrings, created
by my daily backup script, one was created just after switching to
0.9.3 (size=194MB), the other one after some adds (size=146MB).
Running kxa on the former results in a 167MB *ASCII* dump, running
it on the latter results in a 167MB *ASCII* dump. So once it shrinks
by 7/6, the other time it grows by 8/9. But both times it should
expand by 4/3.

Can anyone else verify this? Or am I doing something wrong?

For comparison, my keyrings are on ftp://ftp.tik.ee.ethz.ch/pub/pgp/keys/;
the last 0.9.2 keyring is named pubring.0.9.2 (191MB), the first
0.9.3 keyring pubring.biggest (194MB), and what I'm currently
extracting is pubring.pgp (167MB).

- -Marcel

PS: I will probably not be able to participate in this discussion
for the next ten days, because I'will be away from my mail. Sorry
for starting a discussion now, but I will catch up afterwards.

PPS: Should any problems with the keyserver arise, please inform
pks-admin@tik.ee.ethz.ch.
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