Unhelpful error message while attempting to generate key pair

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Werner,

Thanks for such a fast and helpful answer to my post.

But I'd like to apologise for the tone of my first post, which came out
rather rude, something I hadn't intended.

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 15:53:48 +0200, Werner Koch wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2023 20:48, Alan Mackenzie said:

> > I type

> >     $ gpg --gen-key

> Use

>    gpg -v --gen-key

> to see more warning.

I did that.  It came out saying something about gnome3.  ;-(

> >     agent_genkey failed: Timeout

> Look like a problem with your pinentry.  Did it show up on another
> screen?  The "-v" should tell you which pinentry was invoked; share that
> with us for help.

Yes, it was my pinentry, which had been set up to use gnome3.  I was
calling gpg on a Linux tty.  As soon as I amended the setup to use
pinentry-curses (Gentoo has a utility to do this), --gen-key worked.

> Next debug level would be

>   gpg -v --debug ipc --gen-key

> but I don't think you need this.

Indeed not.

I now have a 3072-bit key pair, valid for two years.  Thanks again!

> Salam-Shalom,

>    Werner

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).