On 2025-07-09, Dale wrote: > Michael wrote: >> On Monday, 7 July 2025 03:07:35 British Summer Time Dale wrote: >>> Howdy, >>> >>> I have one friend that likes to email with encrypted emails. We have >>> good chats so I set up encryption ages ago. It worked for a long time. >>> We lost contact for a bit but recently started chatting again. I think >>> during a upgrade the Enigmail encryption was broken. I'm not sure >>> when. I've tried every setting I can think of and find and it just >>> refuses to work. I might add, I also lost all the accumulated keys that >>> I had, including my own keys.
Can you check if gpg still has these keys? Here I can do "gpg --list-keys" and "gpg --list-secret-keys", but maybe that's different in newer versions of GnuPG. >>> Enigmail Security Info Error - decryption failed Error: Error during >>> parsing. This message / key probably does not conform to a valid OpenPGP >>> format. >> Hmm ... I suspect this error is caused because Seamonkey is no longer >> supported by Enigmail - see bottom post here: >> >> https://sourceforge.net/p/enigmail/forum/support/thread/b0e5a6791d/ No, Enigmail now supports SeaMonkey again. >> 1. Use a more up-to-date OpenPGP.js and the hope Enigmail in Seamonkey will >> function as expected: ... actually, how long ago was it when this was last used and worked? Has Enigmail been updated? >>> I found the folder /home/dale/.gnupg/ but I'm not sure if I can >>> delete the whole thing, just parts of it, just a single file or I >>> have to do it another way. (Don't do this without backing it up first, or you will definitely lose your private keys.) >> Another way - please see above. You do not have to delete old keys to >> create >> and start using new key pairs. The old private keys are still necessary if >> you want to access previously encrypted files/messages. >> >> HTH. > > > I got busy with a large wood pile and getting it burnt up. Remember the > large sweet gum tree I cut a year or so ago, that wood pile. It's still > burning but almost gone. Anyway. > > I went back and did the setup again. I chose something besides what > used to be built in since it isn't working anyway. Once that was done, > I saw my old keys that I had accumulated was back. Eli signs his > messages. I saw a post by him and noticed that I could use it as a > test. I was able to click the button, it fetched the proper keys and > verified that the message was in fact written, or at least sent, by > Eli. It's not the same as encrypted but from my understanding, both > work the same. It uses the same key and process except that the email > isn't encrypted. So, it worked. I thought I was onto something. (Similar process, but *different* key. A signature is verified by decrypting with a public key, and an encrypted text is decrypted using a private key.) > I then went back to my friend's email that is encrypted. It still shows > that it is broken for same reason as before. It seems, from the little > info it shares, to fail the same way. I don't understand why it works > for Eli's message signing but someone else's it fails. Can you check if the original looks ok or if it could have been corrupted somehow? > I really need to work on what I been wanting to do for years. Set up my > own email fetching/sending software locally so that I can use any client > I want. I'd say you might also want to have your own local IMAP server. Might not be so easy to configure, but I think it'll be easier to point different clients to the IMAP server, compared to e.g. making them work with the same message or mailbox storage format. Or is this already what you have in mind? Outgoing/sending can be "centralized" too, but that can be left as a later improvement, if you need to do it in parts. > Seamonkey is really going downhill. It fails on so many sites > that I rarely use it for browsing anymore. Well, it's javascript frameworks that are going downhill, by requiring features only implemented in a few select browsers. Then sites go downhill, but mostly because they just add a bunch of frameworks and don't care about backwards compatibility or even fallbacks. Work is ongoing to add a few more JS features to SeaMonkey, but this is currently done in a separate branch and can't be used as-is because new syntax for regex and optional chaining - already supported with patches in the main branch - has been temporarily removed to make the backporting task easier. > Most often, the sites I do > visit with Seamonkey; Gentoo forums, wiki and such. For the last year > or so, not much else works. I might add, you about can't get a add-on > anymore. The few I have haven't had updates in years. No telling how > big a can of Raid those need. Currently, the best places to get information on extensions are: - The release notes, - The status meeting notes, which have a section for extensions, e.g. https://wiki.mozilla.org/SeaMonkey/StatusMeetings/2025-07-06#Extensions_Tracking Some extensions are still maintained, and others are in use with updated versions made available by users. If some extension does not work, it is possible it only needs minor changes, as there have been a small number of such breaking changes (IIRC at least one syntax change, and some renames; I think most, if not all, of this is linked/listed in that meeting notes section). > My biggest two problems, I want to switch from Gmail to a paid service > that doesn't snoop. 2, finding a email client that I like. Thunderbird > is supposed to be like the email part of Seamonkey but it is vastly > different. I don't like it to be honest. I also can't open links in > new tabs in a already open instance of Firefox either, or I haven't > figured out how yet. This shouldn't (hopefully... why am I tempting fate...) be complicated, I'm guessing it involves using firefox's "remote" feature to open in a new tab instead of a new instance or a new window. In this regard, it probably works like SeaMonkey. ...unless Firefox has changed this somehow? My guess would be that nowadays this involves a Freedesktop desktop entry file for Firefox capable of opening in a new tab, and associating that to the web protocols at the xdg-open level. Maybe check if this opens in Firefox the way you want. If it doesn't, it might be just a matter of changing the default. xdg-open "https://www.gentoo.org/"; I think the current handler can be checked with xdg-settings get default-web-browser While it's possible to set it with xdg-settings, Firefox should also have a way to offer to set itself as the default. -- Nuno Silva
