How to get a public key registered with a key server

Prerequisites

You need a personal or company GPG key. If you don't have one, this explains how to generate a GPG key.

Export your public key

gpg --export --armor john@example.com > john_doe.pub

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
mQGiBEm7B54RBADhXaYmvUdBoyt5wAi......=vEm7B54RBADh9dmP
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

About the arguments:

--export Export the public key information of the key belonging to john@example.com
--armor Create a base64 encoded ascii string rather than using a binary format
john@example.com The key id to export
> john_doe.pub Save the output into this file

Lilo & Stitch Vodrip -

The frame shudders. Compression blocks swim across the screen like digital jellyfish.

Stitch appears behind her. Not animated anymore. Just… there. Pixels crawling down his face like tears. Except they aren’t pixels. They’re missing data .

Then, in the corner, a single frame of Stitch winking. lilo & stitch vodrip

(whispering, off-sync) "Ohana… means… nobody gets left… behind…"

We see the silhouette of a small blue figure on a cliff. Stitch. But the rip has decayed. His fur flickers between deep blue and negative-space green. The frame shudders

(low, calm, wrong) "This is your copy now."

How would you like to express your creativity inspired by "Lilo & Stitch"? Not animated anymore

Here’s a short piece inspired by the idea of a Lilo & Stitch “VODRIP” (a video-on-demand rip, often implying a raw, early, or slightly glitched digital capture) — treated as a found-footage or lo-fi aesthetic piece.

(distorted, like a dying speaker) "Meega… nala… kweesta…"

A corrupted VODrip of Lilo & Stitch reveals glitches, artifacts, and something watching back.

(final line, clear as a bell) "You kept me."

Alternate way to submit your public key to the key servers using the CLI

gpg --keyid-format LONG --list-keys john@example.com
pub   rsa4096/ABCDEF0123456789 2018-01-01 [SCEA] [expires: 2021-01-01]
      ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456789
uid              [ ultimate ] John Doe <john@example.com>

This shows the 16-byte Key-ID right after the key-type and key-size. In this example it's the highlighted part of this line:

pub rsa4096/ABCDEF0123456789 2018-01-01 [SCEA] [expires: 2021-01-01]

The next step is to use this Key-ID to send it to the keyserver, in our case the MIT one.

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --send-keys ABCDEF0123456789

Congratulations, you published your public key.

Please allow a couple of minutes for the servers to replicate that information before starting to use the key.

General notes on Security

A keyserver does not make any claims about authenticity. It merely provides an automated means to get a public key based on its ID. It's up to the user to decide whether the result is to be trusted, as in whether or not to import the public key to the local chain. Do not blindly import a key but at least verify its fingerprint. The phar.io fingerprint information can be found in the footer.
Instead of using a keyserver, public keys can of course also be imported directly. Linux distributions for example do that by providing their keys in release-packages or the base OS installation image. Phive will only contact a keyserver in case the key used for signing is not already known, a.k.a can not be found in the local chain.