help needed desperately: gpg --decrypt waiting for EOF

[Neil Williams]

On Friday 31 Oct 2003 6:52 pm, Dave Della Costa wrote:
> Sorry Steve, I don't think I explained the problem well enough.  If I
> run, on the command line:
>
> gpg --decrypt
>
> Then I pass it the encrypted text to decrypt, and then I give it the
> password, it just hangs!  It sits and sits and sits...and we get
> nothing.

How are you passing the encrypted text?
If you use:
$ gpg --decrypt
then simply copy and paste the encrypted text in, then you must TELL GnuPG 
when the data is complete. It hasn't 'hung' it's 'waiting for input'. More 
precisely, it's waiting for you to say EndOfFile - EOF.

This stumped me for a while (and the answer is there in the archive but not in 
a form you might expect). GnuPG expects the EOF to be entered as:

Ctrl+D

To experiment, do the following:

$ gpg -a -r 58727399 -e

Now enter a simple test string:
testing decryption

End the string with Ctrl-D

GnuPG outputs a keyblock (in ascii armour because of the -a).

Now copy that block to the clipboard.

gpg -d

Paste the contents in, enter your passphrase when prompted.

Again, end the input using Ctrl-D

The encrypted test string will appear on the next line.



-- 

Neil Williams
=============
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