[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#1129944: pinentry-qt: immediate crash if X display is not available

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2026-03-07 Vincent Lefevre <vincent at vinc17.net> wrote:
> On 2026-03-07 17:17:20 +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
>> On 2026-03-07 07:53:31 +0100, Andreas Metzler wrote:
>>> Plus possibly XDG_SESSION_TYPE. The heuristics are a little bit strange

>> If I unset XDG_SESSION_TYPE (which is "x11" here), the problem
>> disappears in the case where DISPLAY is unset, i.e.
> [...]

> I'm wondering why you did not get an abort like me. But after ssh with
> X11 forwarding, $XDG_SESSION_TYPE is set to "tty" instead of "x11"[*],
> so that this changes the behavior.


Hello,

Because I have got XDG_SESSION_TYPE=tty since I am not using a graphical
display manager like gdm but startx+wmaker.

On 2026-03-07 Vincent Lefevre <vincent at vinc17.net> wrote:
>On 2026-03-07 07:53:31 +0100, Andreas Metzler wrote:
>> ... I doubt it is possible to open an X11 window if DISPLAY is unset,
>> even if XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11.
 
> I confirm. I think that the fallback to curses occurs too early.
> Instead of aborting, pinentry-qt should fall back to curses at
> this time.

I have googled a little bit and iirc wayland behaves differently,
applications fall back to a default compositor if
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland but WAYLAND_DISPLAY is unset.

The whole thing is also not trivially fixable, neither QT nor FLTK have
a direct replacement for gtk_init_check().

cu Andreas
-- 
"You people are noisy," Nia said.
I made the gesture of agreement.