Signing RPMs adds an extra level of trustworthiness to your RPMs. A digital signature helps establish that the package comes from you, really you, and not from someone masquerading as you. Unfortunately, the RPM system requires a bit of set up work before you can sign RPMs.
11.4.1. Checking that the GPG software is installed
To sign packages, you need to ensure that you have the gpg command installed and configured. To check that this command is installed, use a command like the following:
$ rpm -qf `which gpg`
gnupg-1.0.7-6
This shows that the command is available.
GPG and PGP? Acronyms Explained
The RPM documentation uses GPG and PGP pretty much interchangeably, so much so, in fact, that you may think these are typographical errors. Not so.
PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy. Invented by Phil Zimmerman, PGP was originally invented to encrypt e-mail to allow for private communication. Based on a public-key cryptography algorithm, PGP also supports encrypted digital signatures. These signatures allow you to verify that a package you have downloaded really comes from the vendor you think it does. You do this by using the vendor’s public key.
GPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard, a free, open-source implementation of PGP from the GNU project. GPG aims to be compatible with the OpenPGP Internet standard as defined in RFC 2440. It started when a number of developers wanted a free implementation. One such free implementation, GPG, allows Linux vendors such as Red Hat to include PGP in their products. So, in a sense, GPG provides PGP.
PGP has a long and somewhat troubled history as an open-source product and as a commercial product. See www.philzimmermann.com for background on PGP and its long history. See www.gnupg.org for more details on GPG.
