Ubuntu
gnupg2 package

[lucid] GPG smart cards no longer work

Bug #506681 reported by Michael Casadevall on 2010-01-12

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #183514: seahorse-agent stops responding when started with gpg-agent. Edit Remove

This bug affects 4 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	gnupg2 (Ubuntu)	Triaged	High	Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: gnupg2

As of lucid, my GPG smart card reader is no longer detected or supported; this reader is an integrated Lenovo Thinkpad card reader, and is supported by scdaemon.

mcasadevall@daybreak:/var/log$ gpg --card-status
gpg: selecting openpgp failed: ec=6.108
gpg: OpenPGP card not available: general error

mcasadevall@daybreak:/var/log$ gpg2 --card-status
gpg: selecting openpgp failed: Card error
gpg: OpenPGP card not available: Card error

mcasadevall@daybreak:/var/log$ scdaemon -v --server
scdaemon[4103]: handler for fd -1 started
scdaemon[4103]: PC/SC OPEN failed: no service
OK GNU Privacy Guard's Smartcard server ready

No relevant output in /var/log, or dmesg.

Michael Casadevall (mcasadevall) on 2010-01-12

Changed in gnupg2 (Ubuntu):
importance:	Undecided → Medium

Revision history for this message

Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote on 2010-02-10:

I've just experienced the problem as well. Upon further analysis, it turns out that for me gpg-agent is started by the session startup scripts like this:

/usr/bin/gpg-agent --daemon --sh --write-env-file=/home/siretart/.gnupg/gpg-agent-info-faui44a /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/seahorse-agent --execute gnome-session

you can see this from the output of 'ps aux | grep gpg-agent'

this means that the startup script make gpg-agent start seahorse, which interferes badly with smartcards, see bug #185563

Revision history for this message

Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote on 2010-02-10:

IMO, this issue is also very related to the symptoms reported in #346492.

Changed in gnupg2 (Ubuntu):
importance:	Medium → High
status:	New → Triaged

Revision history for this message

Reinhard Tartler (siretart) wrote on 2010-02-11:

after experimenting with the startup scripts, I come to the conclusion that seahorse-agent shouldn't be started at all if gnupg-agent is installed. I'm therefore marking this as duplicate of bug #346492, but the actuall fix will happen in the seahorse-plugins package.