Problems attemoting to use GPG with a USB watch

[David Champion]

* On 2005.01.03, in <200501031650.j03Go0PF028817 at snark.thyrsus.com>,
*	"Eric S. Raymond" <esr at snark.thyrsus.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, this seems not to work.  Here are the messages I
> get when trying to use the keyring on the watch:
> 
> gpg: lock not made: link() failed: Operation not permitted
> gpg: can't lock `/media/usbdisk/gpg/secring.gpg'
> gpg: DBG: oops, `/media/usbdisk/gpg/secring.gpg.lock' is not locked
> gpg: keyblock resource `/media/usbdisk/gpg/secring.gpg': general error
> gpg: lock not made: link() failed: Operation not permitted
> gpg: can't lock `/media/usbdisk/gpg/pubring.gpg'
> gpg: DBG: oops, `/media/usbdisk/gpg/pubring.gpg.lock' is not locked
> gpg: keyblock resource `/media/usbdisk/gpg/pubring.gpg': general error
> gpg: encrypted with ELG-E key, ID 5E995ED4
> gpg: decryption failed: secret key not available

Is the USB device formatted with a FAT/VFAT filesystem? (It looks like
it is, and that's the default with all NVRAM USB storage devices I've
seen.)

You might try adding --lock-never --no-permission-warning to the command
line (or lock-never and no-permission-warning to $GNUPGHOME/options). I
have a somewhat more complicated variation of this on my USB keychain,
and it works; but without this I see errors similar to yours.

-- 
 -D.    dgc at uchicago.edu                                      NSIT::ENSS
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