Method 1 Backup the public and secret keyrings and trust database cp ~/.gnupg/pubring.gpg /path/to/backups/ cp ~/.gnupg/secring.gpg /path/to/backups/ cp ~/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg /path/to/backups/ # or, instead of backing up trustdb... gpg --export-ownertrust -o chrisroos-ownertrust-gpg.txt