USB Drive Use

Henry Hertz Hobbit hhhobbit7 at netscape.net
Wed May 3 16:01:35 CEST 2006


>Sarixe Avaliesz wrote:
>> John W. Moore III wrote:
>>> If you mean GPG then Yes there is.  Check out GPG 2 GO on my Homepage:
>>>
>>> http://tinyurl.com/9ubue
>>>
>>> JOHN :-D
>>> Timestamp: Wednesday 26 Apr 2006, 18:54  --400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
>> No, I mean GPA.  I already have successfully installed GPG on my USB
>> device.  It's GPA (GNU Privacy Assistant).  Actually, It doesn't need to
>> be GPA, I'm just looking for a portable frontend to GPG that I can
>> install on the USB device and use on multiple computers.  One of these
>> computers has the users configured in such a way that the privileges are
>> very limited, thus I can't have anything with a registry value, etc.
>> Any suggestions?
>
>For a multi-environment setup, the Java-based Occulti suite
>(http://sourceforge.net/projects/occulti) might be an option. Of course,
>it's still in beta, and I've never used it, and I have no idea if it
>would work on a USB device, but it's worth a try...

I think you are asking for something that can't be done.  I don't mean
the USB drive - I mean the registry.  As much as you would like to think
that you don't have registry settings, you do!  For almost program you
need TWO:

1. For the program itself, registry entries need to be entered into
   the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE area.  There is no way around that.  If you
   don't want a GUI program but something that runs in a cmd.exe window
   then that may be possible.  Even though you don't have a lot of access
   rights, I think the Administrator shouldn't have any problems with
   installing WinPT on the machines that you use:

   http://www.winpt.org

   It (and GnuPG of course) will need to be installed on every machine
   you intend to use.

2. You DO have your own registry settings.  They are stored in the
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER area, and each user has their own area.  In fact,
   this is ONE of the reasons that scanning for spies in the registry
   is so difficult.  Even if I am an administrator I cannot see your
   registry area when I am scanning with Spybot Search & Destroy,
   Ad-Aware, or other AntiSpy tools.  That means scans must be done for
   each and every user that uses the system - yeah, dumb but necessary.

Now having said that, I really think you need to twist their arm to put
WinPT on.  You will just have to search for the WinPT and GnuPG entries
in the registry and find the ones in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER area (YOURS,
not the APPS), and instead of having them point to your folder in the
Documents and Settings (should have been just People), point them over
to the USB drive.  E.G.:

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

becomes (assuming your USB drive is F:)
:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GNUPG]
"HomeDir"="F:\\hhhobbit\\GnuPG"
"gpgProgram"="C:\\Program Files\\GnuPG\\gpg.exe"
"OptFile"="F:\\hhhobbit\\GnuPG\\gpg.conf"

and just move the files there on the USB drive (in my case into
the F:\hhhobbit\GnuPG folder).

Actually, it sounds like they have already installed GnuPG, so why is
it a hassle for them to also install WinPT?  In addition to WinPT and
GnuPG registry entries you may have some Mingw32 registry entries, but
all of those will probably NOT need to be changed.

Now with that information you can see that it is possible with almost ALL
of the front ends if you can alter the registry entries THAT ARE YOURS.
I don't think that it is an unreasonable request.  If they are competent
SysAdmins that you are working with it should be entirely possible.  I
can highly recommend WinPT because you can even handle encrypted mail
using a browser if necessary.

HHH


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