decrypting to stdout does not work properly

[jman]

Fourhundred Thecat via Gnupg-users <gnupg-users at gnupg.org> writes:

> thank you, but what is actually the command to unlock the agent without
> decrypting or signing a dummy file?

I'm not sure. I suspect that if you pipe the output of gpg-agent straight into something else it's 
difficult to catch a clean prompt for a passphrase.

Do you have the env var $PINENTRY_USER_DATA set? When set to `tty` or `curses`, the prompt will be 
on the CLI (just like you're seeing now). Are you in a GUI Linux environment? If yes, you could try 
setting it to something else and it should popup a little GUI window (GTK, QT, etc.) to prompt for 
the passphrase. After you input your passphrase the output will be automatically piped to the next 
command. For this to work you need to install the correct pinentry-* package for your distribution.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,