If you have received an email of the form:

This message has been send to confirm your request
to publish your key.  If you did not request a key
publication, simply ignore this message.

Most mail software can handle this kind of message
automatically and thus you would not have seen this
message.  It seems that your client does not fully
support this service.  The web page

       https://gnupg.org/faq/wkd.html

explains how you can process this message anyway in
a few manual steps.

this means your email client does not currently support WKS confirmation emails.

GNU/Linux

If you are running GNU/Linux on the machine where you normally use GnuPG, you should be able to install Mutt using your package manager:

• Debian/Ubuntu: apt install mutt
• RedHat/Fedora: yum install mutt

See https://mutt.org and https://codesorcery.net/old/mutt/mutt-gnupg-howto for a (old) guide for how to use Mutt with GnuPG.

Recommended is to use GPGME

# Mutt needs to be built with gpgme support for this to work (Debian's is):
#     mutt -v | grep -i gpgme
set crypt_use_gpgme=yes

You can configure Mutt to handle WKS requests by appending the following line (as root) to /etc/mailcap :

application/vnd.gnupg.wks; /usr/lib/gnupg/gpg-wks-client -v --read --send; needsterminal; description=WKS message

Depending on which operating system you are using, and how you have installed GnuPG, the exact path to gpg-wks-client may differ (the above is correct for Debian/Ubuntu). Please ensure the path is correct before continuing.

You will also need to configure a local mail delivery agent (e.g. Exim or Postfix).

Once this is done, start Mutt and follow these steps:

• If you do not see the contents of your usual inbox, hit 'c' and type in the URL of your inbox (e.g. imaps://user@my.domain)
• Using the arrow keys and PgUp/PgDown, navigate to the "Confirm your key publication" email and hit Enter.
• Hit 'v' to view the attachments to the message. You should see a menu like the following:

q:Exit  s:Save  |:Pipe  p:Print  ?:Help
  I     1 <no description>                 [multipa/mixed, 7bit, 1.7K]
  I     2 ├─><no description>              [text/plain, 7bit, us-ascii, 0.4K]
  I     3 └─><no description>              [applica/vnd.gnupg., 7bit, 1.1K]
  I     4 <no description>                 [applica/pgp-signat, 7bit, 0.7K]

• Navigate to the applica/vnd.gnupg entry (usually number 3 in the list) and press Enter. Mutt should take care of the rest.
• Hit 'q' to exit the menu and 'i' to exit the message.
• If you need to respond to another confirmation request, repeat the last four steps.
• Hit 'q' again to exit Mutt.

If your local mail server (Exim, Postfix) is set up correctly, the confirmation should already have been sent to the WKS server and you should shortly receive a final confirmation email. Type sudo mailq to check if there are any undelivered mails.

Windows

TBC

MacOS

TBC