GNU bug report logs - #8791
23.3; EasyPG: pinentry in remote emacs session without X

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From: Daiki Ueno <ueno <at> unixuser.org>
To: "Roland Winkler" <winkler <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 8791 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#8791: 23.3; EasyPG: pinentry in remote emacs session without X
Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:46:05 +0900

"Roland Winkler" <winkler <at> gnu.org> writes:

> On Fri Jun 3 2011 Daiki Ueno wrote:
>> Well I think pinentry should fallback to use curses in this case.
>> However it is not currently possible since there is no way to get the
>> tty where Emacs is running.  See:
>> 
>> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/96207
>
> I do not know much about the internals of gpg. I was wondering: for
> gpg, is there anything similar to the ssh-add command, which could
> serve as a fallback?

I suspect that gpg command installed on your remote system is GPG2,
which is tightly coupled with gpg-agent (and thus pinentry) for secret
key operations by its design.

Assuming that, I could imagine a couple of (insecure) workarounds:

1. install both GPG1 and GPG2
2. keep using GPG2 and write a pinentry program which retrieves
  passphrase via emacsclient.

Generally I'd recommend 1, since most distros provide both packages,
which can be installed with no conflict.

Regards,
-- 
Daiki Ueno

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