hello y'all been a while. anyway, i kinda of have a problem with encrypting, just learnt it,and have been able to generate a key, so i have my public key and phrase already, also i can encrypt. but the problem now is, i created a text file, and edited it using vi editor, then turned it into a tar file then compressed with bzip2. when i try de-decrypting the file again with this command "gpg -d /home/mike/filename.tar.bz2.gpg" , and after i type in my phrase as requested, the output is always gibberish, and i know it meant to display the original data. that really is my problem, and i need help displaying the real data. please don't tell me to go read the MAN pages. distro - is redhat linux. waiting in anticipation. thanks

That is what i do:
gpg -c "$TAR_FILE"
gpg --output "$TAR_FILE" --decrypt "$GPG_FILE"
I know that it completely skips the "mail"-part. For my purpose its sufficient.

If you haven't read this, you'll find it useful http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.html