Arch Linux

parbleu

Member

Registered: 2021-11-28

Posts: 19

[Solved] Thunderbird does not prompt pinentry for external GnuPG

Hi there,

I run GNOME and would like to use Thunderbird with externally stored keys. I set-up anything like I used to do on Debian (with GNOME) before. However, Thunderbird seems not to recognize that is has to prompt pinentry.

As pinentry is installed, it should be set as gpg's default pinentry-program and consequently be prompted by any application, am I right? Or do I need a GNOME/GTK-specific version of pinentry for this?

Last edited by parbleu (2022-01-11 19:16:02)

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,309

Re: [Solved] Thunderbird does not prompt pinentry for external GnuPG

Thunderbird recently (78.1+ ) changed how it deals with GnuPG , was the debian version an older one ?

Have checked https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Thunde … rnal_GnuPG ?

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

parbleu

Member

Registered: 2021-11-28

Posts: 19

Re: [Solved] Thunderbird does not prompt pinentry for external GnuPG

The Debian package stayed some time at 78.x, but recently was updated to the recent version 91.x.

I checked the entry in the Wiki and the requirements (namely the packages gnupg, gpgme and pinentry, as well as configuring mail.openpgp.allow_external_gnupg in Thunderbird) are met.

The passphrase is requested in the terminal when secret keys are imported. So pinentry seems to work in principle. However, there is also a package called pinentry-gnome3.

Specifically configuring gnupg to use pinentry as described here: GnuPG/pinentry does not help either.

Last edited by parbleu (2022-01-10 17:29:36)

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,321

Re: [Solved] Thunderbird does not prompt pinentry for external GnuPG

The "pinentry" binary tries to execute the gtk2 version or if that fails, the ncurses version. So for that to work you need to install gtk2.
Alternatively you can set /usr/bin/pinentry-gnome3 (you have to install gcr) or /usr/bin/pinentry-qt in your gpg configuration. (Those binaries are part of the pinentry package)

As a third option you can use /etc/pinentry/preexec to execute the qt or gnome3 version when "pinentry" is called.

Last edited by progandy (2022-01-10 19:24:31)

---

| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' | alias ENGLISH='LANG=C.UTF-8 ' |

parbleu

Member

Registered: 2021-11-28

Posts: 19

Re: [Solved] Thunderbird does not prompt pinentry for external GnuPG

Great! Setting the gnome3 variant worked without the need for further installations (qt and preexec did not work).

pinentry-program /usr/bin/pinentry-gnome3

Thanks!

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,309

Re: [Solved] Thunderbird does not prompt pinentry for external GnuPG

Glad it works now, please prepend [Solved] to the thread titlte (edit first post).

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky