Very Newbie Questions

[Henry Hertz Hobbit]

On Sat, 2006-12-16 at 18:07 -0800, Hwy101y at Yahoo.com wrote:

> I am a XP Pro User, Thunderbird - I got the extension for Thunderbird to
> do GnuPG... and have the executable to Install the Encryption program.
> 
> I mainly want to ?Sign?my msgs at this point and not Encrypt, is this
> possible to just Sign without a lot of hassle?
> Or to setup to default that way so I don't have to choose to Sign and
> not encrypt?
> 
> Thanks for Any Pointers - Tom

I don't know what you are using to install GnuPG itself.  Make
sure that you have a copy of iconv.dll (zip that contains it if
doing separately is libiconv-1.9.1.dll.zip) is in your
%SystemDrive%\windows\system32 folder After the install.  I don't
know whether they put the following values in the registry with
what you are using but you can check it after installing GnuPG
with regedit:

--------------------------------------------
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\GNU]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\GNU\GNUPG]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\GNU\GNUPG]
"gpgProgram"="C:\\Program Files\\GnuPG\\gpg.exe"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mingw32]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mingw32\NLS]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mingw32\NLS]
"MODir"="C:\\Program Files\\GnuPG\\Locale"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GNUPG]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GNUPG]
"HomeDir"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\%USERNAME%\\Application Data\\Gnu
\\GnuPG"
"gpgProgram"="C:\\Program Files\\GnuPG\\gpg.exe"
"OptFile"="C:\\Documents and Settings\\%USERNAME%\\Application Data\\Gnu
\\GnuPG\\gpg.conf"
-------------------------------------------------------------------

%USERNAME% should just be your user name (starting a cmd window should
tell you who you are in the prompt - it is the last folder name unless
you changed where cmd starts up).  The last line and the second from
the last wrapped on me (HomeDir and OptFile). If these entries aren't
in the registry after you install GnuPG, you may want to save this
portion (the stuff between the lines) to a file named YOURNAME.reg,
Just be sure your key folder is Gnu\GnuPG and not just GnuPG. If it
is just GnuPG delete the "\\Gnu" from the two Documents and Settings
lines. Replace %USERNAME% with your real user name.  Then double
click on the file.  I must mention that I think GPG4Win does all of
this for you.  If it does, do NOT move where it puts your key files.
I finally because a fascist and took control of where they were on
my own.

I would encourage you NOT to sign every message since most people
don't have OpenPGP encryption and will wonder what in the world all
those garbled characters are at the end of the file.  It is easy to
select signing when the occasion demands it (the other person uses
OpenPGP).  I LOVE to receive signed messages.  That shows the
message really came from the other person, especially if I got
the public key from them personally.

HHH