[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#892584: gnupg On a virgin buster/sid system importing a secret key fails

[Albert van der Horst]

Package: gnupg
Version: 2.2.5-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?
     A freshly installed buster, a new user.
     The user tries to import a secret key in a clear-sign format 
   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?
     gpg --import F00265E2.asc
   * What was the outcome of this action?
     A "not changed@ message and "error sending to agent"
   * What outcome did you expect instead?
     Proper installation of course.

   The same command succeeds if executed by root.
   Logs Follow:
"
albert at kiwi:~/backup/.gnupg$ gpg --import F00265E2.asc 
gpg: key E03927B1F00265E2: 3 signatures reordered
gpg: key E03927B1F00265E2: "Albert van der Horst (manipal) <albert at spenarnc.xs4all.nl>" not changed
gpg: key E03927B1F00265E2/E03927B1F00265E2: error sending to agent: No such file or directory
gpg: error building skey array: No such file or directory
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:              unchanged: 1
gpg:       secret keys read: 1
"
-------------------
"
root at kiwi:/home/albert/backup/.gnupg# gpg --import F00265E2.asc 
gpg: key E03927B1F00265E2: 3 signatures reordered
gpg: key E03927B1F00265E2: "Albert van der Horst (manipal) <albert at spenarnc.xs4all.nl>" not changed
gpg: key E03927B1F00265E2: secret key imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:              unchanged: 1
gpg:       secret keys read: 1
gpg:   secret keys imported: 1
"

This suggests a privilege related or PATH related problem.
The secret key was exported from gnu version 1.4.
I was able to use gpg to sign a message after copying from root/.gnupg
to <user>/.gnupg which confirms that the import was succesful.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.14.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages gnupg depends on:
ii  dirmngr         2.2.5-1
ii  gnupg-l10n      2.2.5-1
ii  gnupg-utils     2.2.5-1
ii  gpg             2.2.5-1
ii  gpg-agent       2.2.5-1
ii  gpg-wks-client  2.2.5-1
ii  gpg-wks-server  2.2.5-1
ii  gpgsm           2.2.5-1
ii  gpgv            2.2.5-1

gnupg recommends no packages.

Versions of packages gnupg suggests:
pn  parcimonie  <none>
pn  xloadimage  <none>

-- no debconf information