GPG not letting me specify which key I want to use for decryption is driving me nuts. You'd expect that to be one of the most basic operations, but GPG's user-unfriendliness apparently knows no bounds.
Conversation
Notices
-
muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:15:31 UTC muesli -
muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:20:43 UTC muesli Theoretically, but it could decrypt this with 5 different smartcards, only one of which I currently have on me. As luck will have it, it typically asks me to insert the other 4 smartcards first before it finally realizes "oh, there's a smartcard plugged in that just works".
-
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:20:48 UTC Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: @fribbledom Shouldn't it just pick the right one automagically? -
muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:23:03 UTC muesli I have something encrypted for 5 different smart cards. I only have one of them on me at any given time. GPG will ask me to insert the other 4 smartcards first, before it finally tries to decrypt it with the one present. So there is a *need* to specify it, or GPG needs to become much smarter about such situations.
-
Albert ARIBAUD ✎ (aaribaud@mastodon.art)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:23:04 UTC Albert ARIBAUD ✎ @fribbledom Er... GPG normally selects the decryption key based the public key that was used to encrypt. There should be no *need* to specify a decryption key.
-
muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:31:46 UTC muesli Absolutely. The interface, the documentation, the mailing lists... everything radiates this very attitude.
-
Wolf480pl (wolf480pl@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:31:48 UTC Wolf480pl @fribbledom it seems like GPG was written with a "be smarter than the user" mindset
-
muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:33:31 UTC muesli I've honestly been thinking about this!
-
Robin Frousheger (froosh@aus.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:33:32 UTC Robin Frousheger @fribbledom create a temporary/separate gpg directory which has only the required card imported? Dumb work-around, but should work until you can convince the working group they are wrong 😅
-
muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:47:28 UTC muesli Not that I'm aware of :(
-
Albert ARIBAUD ✎ (aaribaud@mastodon.art)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 11:47:30 UTC Albert ARIBAUD ✎ @fribbledom Ah, ok, I see. I've never used GPG, so I'm guessing here that GPG does not have a "lazy" mode where it would just try the smartcard(s) present rather than ask for all the smartcards it knows.
-
Cy (cy@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:09:15 UTC Cy @fribbledom Wait, decryption? So you want GPG to fail saying it can't decrypt it, even though you have the right decryption key?
-
muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:09:15 UTC muesli No, I want gpg to use the one decryption key I tell it to use and stop asking me for 4 other smartcards I don't currently have on me.
-
muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:10:55 UTC muesli @cy It will eventually stumble upon the one smartcard it could have used to begin with, but not before asking me to plug in all the other ones first.
-
Cy (cy@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 16-May-2022 16:10:56 UTC Cy @fribbledom Oh I get it. You're saying it's picking the wrong decryption key, failing, then not letting you specify the right one.
-