Werner Koch dixit: >Since the release of 2.1 the only valid use case for 1.4 are some >non-POSIX systems (VMS), very old Unix systems, and for those users who >still need to use their old (insecure) PGP-2 keys.
… and scripts, for example, we have a key generation script (wrapper around --gen-key with certain options, which automatically fills in stuff from LDAP) at work. Oh and some remote operations on servers. [ on to version 2 ] >Assuming that you are not using systemd, I would strongly suggest not to >start gpg-agent by hand but let gpg et al start it on demand. The only No, that’s **extremely** undesirable. The “current” way is: when I log in, Debian’s X session magic starts gpg-agent automatically. For some tools that need it, I also put… GPG_AGENT_INFO=~/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent:0:1 … into the environment. That’s my :0 session. Then I have a :2 session which is a VNC server. It’s started manually from an xterm in the :0 session, so it inherits the agents. I also have a script in /etc/profile.d/ which picks up both agents when I log into the box via SSH. gpg-agent is configured to use pinentry-kwallet, which reads the PGP password from the KDE wallet. This means I only have to login once after I boot up the machine, and can then use the same agents no matter how I later log in (either unlock the screen, jump onto the box via ssh, or use vncviewer). This is important to have a non-sucking workflow. (It took me some, long, time until gpg2 and pinentry stopped asking on the wrong either terminal or X display, which basically made remote signing unusable when I had not yet solved it with my current solution.) Funnily enough, this all works well with gnupg. I only need gpg2 for S/MIME in Kontact/KDEPIM. Also, compare (especially the warnings!): tglase@tglase:~ $ gpg2 -K gpg: keyserver option 'verbose' is unknown gpg: keyserver option 'verbose' is unknown gpg: WARNING: server 'gpg-agent' is older than us (2.1.11 < 2.1.14) /home/tglase/.gnupg/pubring.gpg ------------------------------- sec rsa4096 2009-01-05 [SCEA] [expires: 2018-01-13] BCB19DAB35033640AE347A718950C1895EB8D3B3 uid [ultimate] Thorsten Glaser (tarent GmbH) <…> uid [ultimate] Thorsten Glaser (Jabber) <…> uid [ultimate] Thorsten Glaser (tarent GmbH) <…> … versus… tglase@tglase:~ $ gpg -K /home/tglase/.gnupg/secring.gpg ------------------------------- sec 3072R/272AD62F 2009-10-21 [expires: 2016-09-29] uid Thorsten Glaser (tarent GmbH • Nur zu Testzwecken) <…> uid testname (d) <…> uid SiMKo 2 <…> sec 2048R/EB839C67 2009-10-23 uid Thorsten Glaser (Testkey • tarent GmbH) <…> sec 1024R/D1D8EFD2 2014-08-18 uid Test for Mozilla bug#1054187 sec 3072R/BD26DDA7 2015-06-11 uid TestMIT Glaser (tarent solutions GmbH) <…> sec 4096R/5EB8D3B3 2009-01-05 [expires: 2013-01-04] uid Thorsten Glaser (tarent GmbH) <…> bye, //mirabilos (extremely-long-time pgp2.6.3in user) -- 18:47⎜<mirabilos:#!/bin/mksh> well channels… you see, I see everything in the same window anyway 18:48⎜<xpt:#!/bin/mksh> i know, you have some kind of telnet with automatic pong 18:48⎜<mirabilos:#!/bin/mksh> haha, yes :D 18:49⎜<mirabilos:#!/bin/mksh> though that's more tinyirc – sirc is more comfy