How can I sign a transaction with ./tezos-client knowing the secret key?

Question

I fear I may have made an expensive error. I have an account that has more Tezos than I would like to admit. Upon trying to transfer Tezos out of the account like this:

./tezos-client transfer 1 from <account a> to <account b>

I receive a message that says:

Unknown secret key for <account a>

Fortunately, I have copied the secret key, the public key and the hash--or account number in my records. However, ./tezos-client doesn't seem to know the secret key for this account anymore. How can I sign this transaction with ./tezos-client?

I have tried

./tezos-client import secret key <alias> unencrypted:<secret key>

that yields:

Failed to read a b58check_encoding data (Signature.Secret_key): "<secret key>"

I have also tried 'encrypted' instead of 'unencrypted' and that yields:

Not a Base58Check-encoded encrypted key

Answer 1

If your secret key begins with 'edesk', then it is encrypted, it should also be either 98 or 54 characters in length. You should be able to import 'encrypted:edesk....' into the tezos client.

Answer 2

I solved it this problem:

Let's say you want to import an account from one machine/enviroment to other.

generate keys with the following command:

octez-client gen keys <alias> -s p256 

octez-client show address <alias> -S 

It will shows these values:

Hash: [tz…]
Public Key: [p2p…]
Secret Key: unencrypted:[This is the one you should copy]

Then when you want to import it run the following command:

octez-client import secret key <alias> unencrypted:[paste what you previously copy] 

It might start with something like… “p2s…” It will prompt that tezos account was added.

What I think might happened is that you were passing the public key instead of the Secret Key.

I hope this can help anyone.