Pinentry-qt.exe not installed

Gpg4win help-en
1

I have 2 questions but I will give a context first: I only installed the GnuPG and Kleopatra components, which comes with only pinentry-basic.exe.

  1. Which component installs pinentry-qt.exe? Why can’t the users select which pinentry GUI to use, regardless of the components selected?
  2. The reason why I want qt version is actually because I don’t need to click the input box with my mouse first. The dialog is automatically focused when being launched. Can I do something similar with the basic version?

Thank you guys in advance.

2

Hi @Dim,

Which component installs pinentry-qt.exe?

I guess it should come in all installs except the minimal one and maybe available as pinentry.exe. But I haven’t tried.

Why can’t the users select which pinentry GUI to use, regardless of the components selected?

Too many top level options would get increasingly harder to handle both for the users and for the installation system. Ideally only the default pinentry is enough. If you really need a different one, install them all and use the pinentry option of the configuration file gpg-agent.conf to change which one is used.

The dialog is automatically focused when being launched. Can I do something similar with the basic version?

Probably not. (Again I did not check in detail, but it makes sense as it is the basic version.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

3

pinentry-qt is installed as pinentry.exe if you have installed the Kleopatra component it should be installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\bin, where all Kleopatra executables reside. And it is the one Kleopatra uses by default. Therefore I’ve never seen the basic version.

Which version of Gpg4win did you install?

4

Hi. I’ve installed Gpg4win v4.4.1 on 2 PCs. Both PCs have the GnuPG and Kleopatra components checked. However, the pinentry dialog appears to be different:
https://imgur.com/a/w97xDk3
In the second PC, my gpg-agent.conf only has a single line:
default-cache-ttl 21600

5

The gpg-agent.conf is not relevant unless you set another pinentry program there, overriding the default pinentry.exe (which is pinentry-qt).

On the PC where pinentry-qt is not used:
Does C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\bin\pinentry.exe exist?

  • if not: reinstall Kleopatra and check again
  • if the executable is there: Is pinentry-program set in gpg-agent.conf on that machine?
    • if yes, what does the line look like?
6

pinentry.exe exists and pinentry-program is not set.
However, I just tried explicitly specifying pinentry-program D:\Gpg\bin\pinentry.exe and it uses the Qt version. But once I remove this line it reverts to the dialog shown in the second screenshot.

When running the Gpg4win-installer, I had the installation path set as D:\Gpg.

It seems like if I don’t have the option set, the default pinentry becomes D:\GnuPG\bin\pinentry-basic.exe instead

7

Did you have a previous version of Gpg4win installed on one of the PCs?
(Obviously, there must be a difference between them. And this is causing the different behaviour, the the question is: Which one? )

8

I think so. I don’t exactly remember what was the version I’ve installed on the 2nd PC, but it was probably around 2018 so I’d assume it is v3.x

9

An old installation is a potential reason for a different pinentry being present. If it isn’t too much of a hassle for you, configure the pinentry you want on the system that is different and it should be okay.

For new systems keep an eye on it. And if you can reproduce it (on a test system or so) please let us know, so we can go and hunt the issue. :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.