Re: Problem signing a tag

Joshua J. Kugler venit, vidit, dixit 03.11.2009 19:11:

On Monday 02 November 2009, Alex Riesen said something like:

quoted

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 01:58, Joshua J. Kugler [off-list ref] 

wrote:

quoted

quoted

Nobody on the git IRC channel responded to this question, even
after asking it a few times, so I thought I'd try here.

I'm having trouble signing a tag.  I'm using this command:

git tag -u EAFD344D14EA086E -F .git/TAG_EDITMSG tag_name

I type in my passphrase, and am then told:

error: gpg failed to sign the tag
error: unable to sign the tag

However, if I use this command:

gpg -s -u EAFD344D14EA086E

and use the same passphrase, it works fine. Is there any way to
find out why a key-signing is failing?

What does "echo $?" after it prints? IOW, maybe plain gpg fails too,
without printing anything special, and you don't pay attention to the
exit code. Git does. And it runs "gpg -bsau <key-id>".

$ git tag -s -F .git/TAG_EDITMSG tag_name

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "Joshua J. Kugler [off-list ref]"
1024-bit DSA key, ID 14EA086E, created 2009-08-09

gpg: problem with the agent - disabling agent use
error: gpg failed to sign the tag
error: unable to sign the tag
$ echo $?
128

And when I sign at the prompt:

$ gpg -sa

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "Joshua J. Kugler [off-list ref]"
1024-bit DSA key, ID 14EA086E, created 2009-08-09

gpg: problem with the agent - disabling agent use
Blah blah blah blah
Blah blah blah blah
$ echo $?
2

[...]

I assume you don't want to use gpg-agent, that should be the easy way out.

If gpg is trying to contact the agent it means that "use-agent" is set
(from the config) and, probably, also that GPG_AGENT_INFO is set but no
agent responds at that socket. (echo $GPG_AGENT_INFO)

Many distros set up this stuff automatically. Try unsetting both:
unset GPG_AGENT_INFO
gpg --no-use-agent ...

If that helps you can put "--no-use-agent" in your gpg config.

2 is a non-fatal error, 128 a fatal one, btw.

Michael