[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#834633: Info received (Bug#834633: Acknowledgement (gpg: signing failed / agent_genkey failed: Operation cancelled))

[Linus Lüssing]

With some help from IRC the problem could be narrowed down to
pinentry. My setup so far involved a VNC session and the only
pinentry package installed was "pinentry-gnome3". What works for
me is pinentry-gtk2, for instance.

Using VNC:
* pinentry-gnome3: "Operation cancelled" (why?)
* pinentry-gtk2: works!
* pinentry-qt: Other, VNC+qt4 specific bug
* pinentry-curses: "Permission denied" (why?)

Using ssh:
* pinentry-gnome3: Permission denied (obviously,needs X11)
* pinentry-gtk2: Permission denied (obviously, needs X11)
* pinentry-qt: Permission denied (obviously, needs X11)
* pinentry-curses: Permission denied (why?) 

Using ssh with X-forwarding (ssh -X):
* pinentry-gnome3: Operation cancelled (why?)
* pinentry-gtk2: works!
* pinentry-qt:  works!
* pinentry-curses: Permission denied (why?)


So I'll be using pinentry-gtk2 for now which reduces the severity
of this bug for me. But the error message gnupg displays is a
little confusing and does not indicate to the user that s/he
should maybe try installing an alternative (non-broken?) pinentry
package.

Regards, Linus


PS: And with switching to pinentry-gtk2 I also had to add a
"set pgp_use_gpg_agent=yes" to my muttrc to avoid being asked for
a password twice (once within mutt and once in the pop-up).