Simple beginners questions about the gpg-smartcard

[Werner Koch]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:34, yalla at fsfe.org said:

> Why do I need to import the secret-key from disk to some local gpg to
> that it can recognize the key on the smartcard at all?

It is not the secret key but a stub for the secret key.  This allows gpg
to ask you for the smartcard and display the serial numbger of the card
it expects.

You don't need to export/import that secret key stub as gpg should
create that stub automagically.

> 2) I bought a couple of SCM SPR-532 cardreaders. I learned that the
> pin-pads are currently only experimentally supported by gpg
> 2.something. Is there any chance that the pin-pad support will be
> backported to gpg 1.4.x?

In my daily work I use a KAAN Advanced but the SPR 532 works as well.

Backporting is somewhat problematic as the automated passphrase
interface (for GUI use) is not really able to display a notification
popup to inform you that you should move your fingers over to the
reader's pinpad.

If you have gpg-agent (and scdaemon) installed gpg 1.4 will use the
smartcard code from scdaemon can can thus utilize the popup feature
provided by gpg-agent and pinentry.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

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