confusing message: 'no pinentry'

[Petr Uzel]

Dne Tuesday 02 of September 2008 16:15:02 Petr Uzel napsal(a):
> Hi,
>
> Dne Tuesday 02 of September 2008 15:59:22 Steve Revilak napsal(a):
> > Is there a pinentry in root's path?
>
> Yes, it is in /usr/bin/pinentry (and /usr/bin is in root's path). In
> openSUSE, which I use, the /usr/bin/pinentry is a bash script that tries to
> determine, which pinentry (-qt, -curses, -gtk) to execute and then executes
> it.
>
> > > Further investigation revealed that the problem only arises if I 'su'
> > > from my normal user account (running gpg-agent and thus with
> > > GPG_AGENT_INFO set). 'su' preserves GPG_AGENT_INFO variable and gpg
> > > then tries to connect to gpg-agent running under my normal account, and
> > > then gpg fails. When switched to root with 'su -', gpg works fine.
> >
> > This sounds like normal behavior for su.  "su -" is supposed to
> > simulate a full login of the target account; it discards most
> > environment.  By contrast, "su" (without the minus) doesn't discard
> > the environment.
>
> I know all of this. My question was whether the gpg behavior under
> specified circumstances ('incorrect' GPG_AGENT_INFO env. variable) should
> not be adjusted somehow.
>
> In other words, I know how to solve my issue (use 'su -'/unset
> GPG_AGENT_INFO/killall gpg-agent/whatever), but I'm uncertain that all
> other gpg users know it too. Especially when the message about missing
> pinentry is quite confusing.

I'd try to fix this problem, but I'm not sure how to do it in 'correct and 
clean way'. Any ideas or recommendations ? Or am I the only one who thinks 
this is worth fixing?

TIA

-- 
Best regards / s pozdravem

Petr Uzel, Packages maintainer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
SUSE LINUX, s.r.o.                          e-mail: petr.uzel at suse.cz
Lihovarská 1060/12                          tel: +420 284 028 964
190 00 Prague 9                             fax: +420 284 028 951
Czech Republic                              http://www.suse.cz