This is a reimplementation of Parcimonie, written completely in a si{mp,ng}le Bash script.

parcimonie.sh refreshes individual keys in your GnuPG keyring at randomized intervals. Each key is refreshed over a unique, single-use Tor circuit.

Unlike the original Parcimonie, parcimonie.sh guarantees that each key refresh happens over a unique Tor circuit even when multiple refreshes happen at the same time. (How?)

You can check the original Parcimonie design document if you are wondering why this is needed.

The tl;dr version: gpg --refresh-keys discloses your entire list of PGP keys to the keyserver you are using, as well as whoever is wiretapping your connection if you are using an unencrypted protocol such as HKP (which is the default for most setups). That is a bad thing.

If on Arch, grab the parcimonie-sh-git package from the AUR.

Otherwise, just copy parcimonie.sh somewhere and make it run at boot with the right environment variables (see the "Usage" section).

• GnuPG: tested with GnuPG 2, probably works OK with 1.* as well
• Have Tor running

Just run parcimonie.sh. There are some optional environment variables that you can use to override the default values.

• TOR_ADDRESS: IP on which Tor is listening. If not set, uses 127.0.0.1.
• TOR_PORT: Port on which Tor is listening. If not set, uses 9050. Make sure this refers to a SOCKSPort entry of your torrc for which NoIsolateSOCKSAuth is not present. If you have no idea what that means, you have nothing to worry about.
• PARCIMONIE_USER: The user to run as. If not set, will run as whatever user is running the script. If set, will su to the specified user. You can also set it to the special value *, which will cause the script to multiple run instances of itself: one instance for each user who has a directory called .gnupg in their home directory. Useful for boot scripts, and for config files for the systemd service.
• MIN_WAIT_TIME: Minimum time to wait between key refreshes. Defaults to 900 seconds (15 minutes).
• TARGET_REFRESH_TIME: Rough expected time for refreshing every key in the keyring. Defaults to 604800 seconds (1 week). Note that this doesn't guarantee that every key will be refreshed in that time. The time intervals between refreshes and the actual keys to refresh are picked randomly every time. See the delay computation function for the exact formula.
• USE_RANDOM: Whether or not to use /dev/random instead of /dev/urandom as source of randomness. By default, this is set to false, therefore /dev/urandom is used.
• GNUPG_BINARY: Path to gpg. If not set, will use gpg from the $PATH.
• TORSOCKS_BINARY: Path to torsocks. If not set, will use torsocks from the $PATH.
• GNUPG_HOMEDIR: Value for the --homedir argument of gpg. Ignored when PARCIMONIE_USER=*. If not set, no --homedir argument is passed, which usually means ~/.gnupg will be used.
• GNUPG_KEYSERVER: Value for the --keyserver argument of gpg. If not set, no --keyserver argument is passed, which means your default keyserver will be used.
• GNUPG_KEYSERVER_OPTIONS: Value for the --keyserver-options argument of gpg. If not set, a single http-proxy= argument is passed. If you already use torify connections to keyservers with gpg's http-proxy keyserver-option in your gpg.conf while having other keyserver-options defined on top of that, you will need to re-specify those along with http-proxy= in GNUPG_KEYSERVER_OPTIONS in order to disable the proxying part. parcimonie.sh needs to run gpg with torsocks in order to ensure that all key grabs happen on different Tor circuits, and torsocks won't allow gpg to connect to its http-proxy on 127.0.0.1.
• TMP_PREFIX: Prefix for temporary files. Defaults to /tmp/parcimonie.
• PARCIMONIE_CONF: If set, this file will be sourced before running. Useful to set environment variables without polluting the environment too much.

If you installed the Arch package, you have a parameterized systemd service called parcimonie.sh@. The parameter refers to an environment file in /etc/parcimonie.sh.d; for example, the parcimonie.sh@hello service reads the environment variables from /etc/parcimonie.sh.d/hello.conf, and runs parcimonie.sh with it.

A ready-to-use configuration file is provided at /etc/parcimonie.sh.d/all-users.conf; it is set to start parcimonie.sh for all users on the system who have a ~/.gnupg directory. If that sounds like what you want, you can enable it right away using the parcimonie.sh@all-users service. If not, another sample configuration file is provided at /etc/parcimonie.sh.d/sample-configuration.conf.sample.

Oh gee, let me think.

$ pactree parcimonie-git                       $ pactree -d 1 parcimonie-sh-git
parcimonie-git                                 parcimonie-sh-git
├─perl-any-moose                               ├─bash
│ ├─perl-moose                                 ├─torsocks
│ │ ├─perl-class-load                          ├─tor
│ │ │ ├─perl-module-runtime                    └─gnupg
│ │ │ │ └─perl-params-classify
│ │ │ ├─perl-data-optlist
│ │ │ │ ├─perl-params-util
│ │ │ │ ├─perl provides perl-scalar-list-utils
│ │ │ │ └─perl-sub-install
│ │ │ ├─perl-package-stash
│ │ │ │ ├─perl-dist-checkconflicts
│ │ │ │ │ ├─perl-list-moreutils
│ │ │ │ │ └─perl provides perl-exporter
│ │ │ │ ├─perl-package-deprecationmanager
│ │ │ │ │ ├─perl-list-moreutils
│ │ │ │ │ ├─perl-params-util
│ │ │ │ │ └─perl-sub-install
│ │ │ │ ├─perl provides perl-scalar-list-utils
│ │ │ │ └─perl-package-stash-xs
│ │ │ ├─perl-try-tiny
│ │ │ ├─perl-test-fatal
│ │ │ │ └─perl-try-tiny
│ │ │ └─perl-module-implementation
│ │ │   └─perl-module-runtime
│ │ ├─perl-class-load-xs
│ │ │ └─perl-class-load
│ │ ├─perl-data-optlist
│ │ ├─perl-devel-globaldestruction
│ │ │ ├─perl-sub-exporter
│ │ │ │ ├─perl
│ │ │ │ ├─perl-data-optlist
│ │ │ │ ├─perl-params-util
│ │ │ │ └─perl-sub-install
│ │ │ └─perl-sub-exporter-progressive
│ │ ├─perl-dist-checkconflicts
│ │ ├─perl-eval-closure
│ │ │ ├─perl provides perl-test-simple
│ │ │ ├─perl-test-requires
│ │ │ ├─perl-test-fatal
│ │ │ ├─perl-try-tiny
│ │ │ └─perl-sub-exporter
│ │ ├─perl-list-moreutils
│ │ ├─perl-mro-compat
│ │ ├─perl-package-deprecationmanager
│ │ ├─perl-package-stash
│ │ ├─perl-package-stash-xs
│ │ ├─perl-params-util
│ │ ├─perl-sub-exporter
│ │ ├─perl-sub-name
│ │ ├─perl-task-weaken
│ │ └─perl-try-tiny
│ └─perl-mouse
├─perl-namespace-autoclean
│ ├─perl-b-hooks-endofscope
│ │ ├─perl-module-implementation
│ │ ├─perl-module-runtime
│ │ ├─perl-sub-exporter
│ │ ├─perl-sub-exporter-progressive
│ │ ├─perl-try-tiny
│ │ ├─perl-variable-magic
│ └─perl-namespace-clean
│   ├─perl-b-hooks-endofscope
│   └─perl-package-stash
├─perl-gnupg-interface
│ └─perl-any-moose
├─perl-clone
├─perl-config-general
├─perl-file-homedir
│ └─perl-file-which
├─perl-path-class
├─perl-net-dbus
│ ├─dbus
│ │ ├─expat
│ │ │ └─glibc
│ │ ├─coreutils
│ │ ├─filesystem
│ │ └─shadow
│ │   ├─bash
│ │   ├─pam
│ │   └─acl
│ └─perl-xml-twig
│   ├─perl-xml-parser
│   │ └─expat
│   └─perl-text-iconv
├─perl-tie-cache
├─perl-time-duration-parse
│ └─perl-exporter-lite
├─perl-moosex-types-path-class
│ ├─perl-moose
│ ├─perl-moosex-types
│ │ ├─perl-carp-clan
│ │ ├─perl-namespace-clean
│ │ ├─perl-sub-install
│ │ └─perl-sub-name
│ └─perl-path-class
├─perl-moosex-getopt
│ ├─perl-getopt-long-descriptive
│ │ ├─perl-params-validate
│ │ │ └─perl-module-implementation
│ │ └─perl-sub-exporter
│ ├─perl-moose
│ └─perl-moosex-role-parameterized
└─perl

parcimonie.sh is licensed under the WTFPL.