decryption failed: secret key not available

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Samstag, 9. November 2019 01:42:47 CET Bobby Richardson (bobbyric) wrote:
> Hello:
> 
> I need a help in my gpg decryption with crontab.
> Recently my gpg decryption with crontab started failing.

What did you change recently?

> If I do gpg decryption without crontab, it works fine.

cron provides a minimal environment to the jobs it runs. Maybe some 
environment variables are missing if your script is run by cron.

> Here is my background information:
> Platform: Centos 7
> gpg version: 2.0.22
> 
> # When I use crontab with my decryption script in perl, I get following
> result: PGP Decryption Begins.
> Found:  [JW11072019_8559.OUT.pgp] to decrypt.
> gpg: encrypted with ELG key, ID 636A4204
> gpg: decryption failed: No secret key
> 
> # In my login credential profile, I have following configuration:
> chmod 666 `tty`
> 
> # GPG Decrytion
> in my perl script.
> # $PGPpwd has a passphrase string.
> `echo $PGPpwd | gpg2 --batch --passphrase-fd 0 --decrypt $PGPFile >
> $ZIPFile`;

I suggest removing the passphrase from your secret key. Securing your secret 
key with a passphrase and then putting this passphrase in cleartext into a 
script makes batch decryption much more complicated without providing any 
security benefits.

If that does help increase the verbosity of gpg and enable debug logging.

Regards,
Ingo