gpg hangs when asking for passphrase

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Hi Joey--

On Mon 2017-05-08 22:34:35 -0400, Joey Morris wrote:

> I've tried several things without figuring out the problem:
>
>   - Verified that gpg-agent is running with `pgrep -u "${USER}" gpg-agent`.
>   - Restarted gpg-agent with `killall gpg-agent`.
>   - Verified that the socket referenced by $GPG_AGENT_INFO exists.
>   - Ran `export GPG_TTY=$(tty)` in my terminal.
>   - Tried several pinentry variants (tty, curses, qt, gtk). Before rebooting,
>     I'd been using pinentry-tty without a problem.
>
> A couple other examples of commands that hang:
>
>   $ gpg-connect-agent reloadagent /bye
>   $ gpg --edit-key userid
>
> I'm running version 2.1.18 on debian sid. Does anyone have thoughts on what
> might be happening or suggestions for additional troubleshooting?

are you using systemd?  do you have dbus-user-session installed?  how
are you logged into the machine (e.g. X11 via gdm, wayland with gdm, a
text-mode-only vt console, etc, ssh session only)?  do you have
libpam-systemd installed?  are you logged into the machine in multiple
concurrent sessions?  does "gpg-connect-agent" on its own hang, rather
than giving you a "> " prompt that you can interact with?  what version
of the debian package are you running?  when you say you've tried
several pinentry variants, how did you try them all?

        --dkg