Mailing List Archive

Re: Bug#351715: pinentry doesn't work properly on dumb terminals
This has been reported to the Debian bug tracking system. Comments?

Am Montag, 6. Februar 2006 23:02 schrieb Miles Bader:
> Package: pinentry
> Version: 0.7.2-3
> Severity: normal
>
> I often want to use gpg, and thus pinentry, in an Emacs shell buffer or
> the like where a "graphical" curses-based dialog like pinentry-curses
> doesn't work; in some cases I do this when logged in remotely via ssh,
> so pinentry-gtk doesn't work either.
>
> In such a case, pinentry-curses either displays gibberish (if TERM is
> set, but not to something useful, e.g. to "emacs"), or simply fails (if
> TERM is not set).
>
> Pinentry or pinentry-curses should really have a fallback mode that
> simply turns off echoing and reads from the tty, just like gpg does
> when gpg-agent isn't used.
>
> [.To tell the truth, I dislike the heavyweight and intrusive
> pinentry-curses dialog -- it obscures the terminal output which usually
> tells me exactly why gpg is being run! -- and I'd really like to be able
> to specify something like "--no-curses" and have it immediately fallback
> to dumb-terminal mode when no gtk dialog is possible.]

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Re: Bug#351715: pinentry doesn't work properly on dumb terminals [ In reply to ]
At Mon, 27 Feb 2006 13:43:04 +0100,
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> This has been reported to the Debian bug tracking system. Comments?

I have no objection against going back to a simpler version of
pinentry on dumb terminals, or on explicit request via an option.

Anybody volunteering to implement this?

Thanks,
Marcus

> Am Montag, 6. Februar 2006 23:02 schrieb Miles Bader:
> > Package: pinentry
> > Version: 0.7.2-3
> > Severity: normal
> >
> > I often want to use gpg, and thus pinentry, in an Emacs shell buffer or
> > the like where a "graphical" curses-based dialog like pinentry-curses
> > doesn't work; in some cases I do this when logged in remotely via ssh,
> > so pinentry-gtk doesn't work either.
> >
> > In such a case, pinentry-curses either displays gibberish (if TERM is
> > set, but not to something useful, e.g. to "emacs"), or simply fails (if
> > TERM is not set).
> >
> > Pinentry or pinentry-curses should really have a fallback mode that
> > simply turns off echoing and reads from the tty, just like gpg does
> > when gpg-agent isn't used.
> >
> > [.To tell the truth, I dislike the heavyweight and intrusive
> > pinentry-curses dialog -- it obscures the terminal output which usually
> > tells me exactly why gpg is being run! -- and I'd really like to be able
> > to specify something like "--no-curses" and have it immediately fallback
> > to dumb-terminal mode when no gtk dialog is possible.]
>
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> Gpa-dev mailing list
> Gpa-dev@gnupg.org
> http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gpa-dev
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Re: Bug#351715: pinentry doesn't work properly on dumb terminals [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 13:43:04 +0100, Peter Eisentraut said:

> Am Montag, 6. Februar 2006 23:02 schrieb Miles Bader:

>> I often want to use gpg, and thus pinentry, in an Emacs shell buffer or
>> the like where a "graphical" curses-based dialog like pinentry-curses
>> doesn't work; in some cases I do this when logged in remotely via ssh,

What about M-x ansi-term then?

>> Pinentry or pinentry-curses should really have a fallback mode that
>> simply turns off echoing and reads from the tty, just like gpg does
>> when gpg-agent isn't used.

If you have this very special requirement you better use
gpg --no-use-agent
then.

>> [To tell the truth, I dislike the heavyweight and intrusive
>> pinentry-curses dialog -- it obscures the terminal output which usually
>> tells me exactly why gpg is being run! -- and I'd really like to be able

As of now gpg uses gpg-agent and thus pinenrty only in a very limited
way; i.e. for passphrase caching. However the greater plan is to move
all operations related to private keys to gpg-agent and thus gpg won't
be able to decide whether a passphrase is required or not. This has
been implemented in gpg2 (part of gnupg 1.9 but currently not
suggested for use) as well as in gpgsm, gpg's S/MIME cousin. Further
the ssh-agent included in gpg-agent uses pinentry and you can't
predict when it requires input.



Salam-Shalom,

Werner


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