Notes for GnuPG users on several platforms

General Remarks

Always use a current version of GnuPG Version >= 2. (There are only a few rare exceptions to this rule.) GnuPG 2.1.x is "modern", not all applications may already support the new features fully. So when in doubt, use GnuPG 2.0.x.

Ubuntu

gnome-keyring or seahorse may pose as gpg-agent, but known versions today (2014-11) are not fully compatible with the gpg-agent protocol. So applications may show errors or cannot work when they believe they are talking to gpg-agent and try to use its features. Examples: ERR 280 not implemented or a protocol error in the Kleopatra self-tests.

You can detect the situation with GnuPG 2.0.x when checking the environment variable on a shell like echo $GPG_AGENT_INFO. You are talking for a gpg-agent for good, if it has something with gpg-agent in it and a corresponding gpg-agent process is running. Otherwise the connection has probably been taken over.

Solution: Disable gnome-keyring, some hints on how to disable it are within the notes on how to use gpg-agent with ssh (you need only the disable part, not the ssh part) or here.

(TODO link or describe better solution, link/create reports for ubuntu and gnome) For some Details see this gnupg-users post.

Debian

Note that the gnupg2 Package may search for files in paths that differ from the paths of a vanilla build and what its written in the documentation.

E.g: The gpgsm[2.0.19-2+deb7u1] in Wheezy looks in /etc/gnupg2/trustlist.txt but the docs differ (Debian defect #725804).

Mac OS X

Android

Webbrowser

PlatformNotes (last edited 2015-01-27 09:07:07 by bernhard)