pinentry-qt and on-screen keyboards [resolved]

[Stuart Longland]

On 11/4/25 17:40, Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> I had a look at the patches Debian applies to gnupg for current stable
> (bookworm). There doesn't seem to be a patch that changes the default. Maybe
> they ship a global configuration file, but I couldn't find anything in the gpg-
> agent package. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. I know near nothing
> about Debian packaging.

Indeed, I'm not sure where to look either.

These are the offending packages:

> root at vk4msl-tp:~# dpkg -l gnupg*
> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
> | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
> |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> ||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
> +++-==============-============-============-=======================================================================
> ii  gnupg          2.2.40-1.1   all          GNU privacy guard - a free PGP replacement
> un  gnupg-agent    <none>       <none>       (no description available)
> ii  gnupg-l10n     2.2.40-1.1   all          GNU privacy guard - localization files
> ii  gnupg-utils    2.2.40-1.1   amd64        GNU privacy guard - utility programs
> un  gnupg1         <none>       <none>       (no description available)
> ii  gnupg2         2.2.40-1.1   all          GNU privacy guard - a free PGP replacement (dummy transitional package)
> root at vk4msl-tp:~# dpkg -l gpg*
> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
> | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
> |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> ||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
> +++-==============-============-============-=====================================================
> ii  gpg            2.2.40-1.1   amd64        GNU Privacy Guard -- minimalist public key operations
> ii  gpg-agent      2.2.40-1.1   amd64        GNU privacy guard - cryptographic agent
> ii  gpg-wks-client 2.2.40-1.1   amd64        GNU privacy guard - Web Key Service client
> ii  gpg-wks-server 2.2.40-1.1   amd64        GNU privacy guard - Web Key Service server
> ii  gpgconf        2.2.40-1.1   amd64        GNU privacy guard - core configuration utilities
> ii  gpgsm          2.2.40-1.1   amd64        GNU privacy guard - S/MIME version
> ii  gpgv           2.2.40-1.1   amd64        GNU privacy guard - signature verification tool
> un  gpgv1          <none>       <none>       (no description available)
> un  gpgv2          <none>       <none>       (no description available)
> root at vk4msl-tp:~# dpkg -l pinentry*
> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
> | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
> |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> ||/ Name            Version      Architecture Description
> +++-===============-============-============-======================================================
> un  pinentry        <none>       <none>       (no description available)
> ii  pinentry-curses 1.2.1-1      amd64        curses-based PIN or pass-phrase entry dialog for GnuPG
> un  pinentry-doc    <none>       <none>       (no description available)
> ii  pinentry-fltk   1.2.1-1      amd64        FLTK-based PIN or pass-phrase entry dialog for GnuPG
> ii  pinentry-gnome3 1.2.1-1      amd64        GNOME 3 PIN or pass-phrase entry dialog for GnuPG
> ii  pinentry-qt     1.2.1-1      amd64        Qt-based PIN or pass-phrase entry dialog for GnuPG
> un  pinentry-x11    <none>       <none>       (no description available)

I had a sticky-beak at the `gpg-agent` package, but like you found 
nothing incriminating.

The `.gnupg/` directory was copied across wholesale (`rsync` over SSH) 
from a machine running Gentoo.  That said, none of the machines I have 
running Gentoo use a touchscreen.  (I nearly did put Gentoo on this 
tablet actually… but 128GB SSD does not leave much space, hence I 
thought Debian was better here.)

A search revealed that there were rumblings that Debian were going to 
revert the patch, but no indication that those rumblings got acted upon:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=884517
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
   ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.