cannot gen-key

[Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder]

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On Fri, 2002-08-16 at 05:29, Jordan Capps wrote:
> This is my first time trying to us GPG, and I'm new to Linux as well, so
> pleases bare with me.  I tried to create new keys and recieved the
> following error before it attempted to generate them:
>=20
> gpg: can't open `/home/myusername.gnupg.random_seed': Permission denied
>=20

Shouldn't gpg stop at the first permission problem instead of creating
all the other errors? Sounds like a slight design flaw to me - impacting
usability, not necessarily security.

Jordan:

Welcome to the Linux world :-)

You're right, it's probably quite simple.

Change to your home directory, what does 'ls -ld .gnupg' and 'ls -l
.gnupg' show?

probably you can solve the problem with 'chown -R <yourusername> .gnupg'
(execute this as root) if the directory does not belong to 'you' for
some misterious reason, and with 'chmod 0700 .gnupg' and chmod 0600
.gnupg/*' if you don't have direct access permission for some strange
reason.

Or it may be that you don' have a .gnupg directory at all yet (you said
you're trying to use gpg first time). Then it may be that you don't have
write permission in your home directory at all. Make sure you're logged
in as the user you think you are ('id' command). Check that
/home/<username> exists and is writable ('ls -ld /home/<username>', the
output should include something like drwxr-xr-x or drwx------ at the
left. The first four characters must be drwx, these are your permissions
(sorry if you know all this - dunno how knew to Linux you are).

(feel free to mail me privately if you need more assistance here).

cheers
-- vbi

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secure email with gpg                         http://fortytwo.ch/gpg

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