On 9 Oct 2026, at 19:02, void via Gnupg-users <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> It seems keys.openpgp.org and hockeypuck servers like keyserver.ubuntu.com
> don't synch. What other keyservers synch or don't synch?

There are many public keyservers (or keyserver systems), but the biggest ones 
are, in rough order of traffic:

keys.openpgp.org
keyserver.ubuntu.com
the SKS network
the.earth.li

…plus there are many smaller and/or unmaintained servers, but they generally 
serve a limited or stale set of keys.

(I’m defining a “public keyserver” as one that accepts keys from users in any 
email domain and using any software. There are other keyservers such as the 
proton keyserver that only serve keys for addresses in domains that they 
manage, and there are also some keyservers such as the mailvelope keyserver and 
the flowcrypt attester that serve keys for users of specific applications.)

You can see the current SKS network, which includes most public hockeypuck 
servers but not (for now) keysever.ubuntu.com, at 
https://spider.pgpkeys.eu/sks-peers - anything not in this list is not in full 
sync with the network.

But…

> If you're going to publish your key, what servers do you publish to?

I would recommend publishing primarily to the SKS network, because there is a 
bridge configured on several of the SKS nodes that forwards new or updated keys 
to keys.openpgp.org, keyserver.ubuntu.com and the.earth.li — to the best of my 
knowledge none of those are (yet) configured to send updates back to SKS but 
that may change soon.

I would also recommend publishing each key directly to keys.openpgp.org at 
least once, because it will not serve your key in response to an email lookup 
until you have responded to its verification email. This only needs to be done 
once, as subsequent updates should be picked up automatically.

Note also that the.earth.li operates an unusual antispam system where it only 
serves keys in the strong set, i.e. those that have third-party certifications 
over them made by keys already in its database. You don’t have to submit 
directly to it though.

A

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