EasyPG is an all-in-one GnuPG interface for Emacs. It has two aspects: convenient tools which allow to use GnuPG from Emacs (EasyPG Assistant), and a fully functional interface library to GnuPG (EasyPG Library).
Homepage:
Setup for transparent, automatic encryption and decryption:
(require 'epa-file)
(epa-file-enable)Now visit anything.gpg and it will encrypt it when you save the buffer.
See AutoEncryption for alternatives.
To prevent EPG from prompting for a key every time you save a file, put the following at the top of your file:
-*- epa-file-encrypt-to: ("your@email.address") -*-EPA will prompt for the key only the first time you save the file, assuming you have the email address you specified in your keyring.
The following comments are outdated as of Emacs 23:
epa-file will prompt for which key to use for encryption each time you save a .gpg file. The following patch will stop it prompting, and cause it to always use symmetric encryption:
--- Backup/epa-file.el.~1~ 2006-12-20 07:33:07.000000000 +0100
+++ epa-file.el 2007-02-11 13:57:20.000000000 +0100
@@ -186,13 +186,14 @@
(epa-file--encode-coding-string (buffer-substring start end)
coding-system))
(unless (assoc file epa-file-passphrase-alist)
- (epa-select-keys
+ '(epa-select-keys
context
"Select recipents for encryption.
If no one is selected, symmetric encryption will be performed. "
(cond
((listp epa-file-encrypt-to) epa-file-encrypt-to)
- ((stringp epa-file-encrypt-to) (list epa-file-encrypt-to)))))))
+ ((stringp epa-file-encrypt-to) (list epa-file-encrypt-to))))
+ nil)))
(error
(if (setq entry (assoc file epa-file-passphrase-alist))
(setcdr entry nil))
The above patch appears to be included in Emacs 23.
Note that easy-pg consists of two different kind of modules, one is a library (epg.el) and the others are applications (epa-*.el). Auto-encryption (epa-file.el) is a part of the latter. As the docs says “The EasyPG Library dares to disable passphrase caching”, that is intended behavior. Caveat user, if you start using the library directly. ;)
In X, Emacs 23 seems to pop up a graphical window to ask you the keyphrase. How to let it ask the password in minibuffer?
I found the cause for it. The graphical window appears if you run gpg with the --use-agent option. EasyPG adds it (see epg.el) if it sees an environment variable like this one: GPG_AGENT_INFO=/tmp/seahorse-nDQm50/S.gpg-agent:6321:1 (check that with the env command). And you have this variable if for instance you have the program seahorse installed and running (which is the case in Ubuntu). If you uninstall Seahorse, the prompt will always be text instead of graphical. You may have to relogin to X to force Seahorse to close. --DanielClemente
I have the same problem. And in console emacs23 can pop up nothing, so it hang there, you have to use “C-g” quit it. For my gentoo system, I compile the package ‘pinentry’ without gtk qt3 ncurses. It caused emacs23 hang both in X or console. I notice that pinentry did not have the readline USE in recent version.
I found the thread to fix it. http://www.nabble.com/gnupg-interface-td17242718.html
1. Install the latest GnuPG 1.x along with 2.x and let epg-gpg-program to point the executable, or
2. Use other pinentry-program which interact through the windowing system
I generally don’t mind the graphical password prompt when I’m at my desk, but when logged into a remote terminal with multi-tty this can be darn inconvenient (I have to VNC into my desktop just to enter the password!)
Here is my solution that turns off the use of the agent in these cases: http://www.enigmacurry.com/2009/01/14/extending-emacs-with-advice/
How about (setenv “GPG_AGENT_INFO” nil) Note: another form is: (setenv (concat “GPG_AGENT_INFO” nil))
- this did it for me in emacs 23 : nice solution.
Yes but when you use the command line the pinentry widget will popup.
On the Gnupg homepage: GnuPG comes in two flavours: 1.4.9 is the well known and portable standalone version, whereas 2.0.11 is the enhanced and somewhat harder to build version.
IMHO The best solution seem to use the 1.4.9 version.
--ThierryVolpiatto?
Uninstalling seahorse doesn’t work for me (gentoo) - even though GPG_AGENT_INFO is unset I still get the graphical password prompt *scowl*
I use this to temporarily unset the GPG_AGENT_INFO environment variable if running in terminal:
;; Do not use gpg agent when runing in terminal
(defadvice epg--start (around advice-epg-disable-agent activate)
(let ((agent (getenv "GPG_AGENT_INFO")))
(when (not (display-graphic-p))
(setenv "GPG_AGENT_INFO" nil))
ad-do-it
(when (not (display-graphic-p))
(setenv "GPG_AGENT_INFO" agent))))If you use emacsclient and sometimes over plaintext ssh, sometimes in X, this will alter the behavious on-the-fly:
(defadvice epg--start (around advice-epg-disable-agent disable)
"Don't allow epg--start to use gpg-agent in plain text
terminals."
(if (display-graphic-p)
ad-do-it
(let ((agent (getenv "GPG_AGENT_INFO")))
(setenv "GPG_AGENT_INFO" nil) ; give us a usable text password prompt
ad-do-it
(setenv "GPG_AGENT_INFO" agent))))
(ad-enable-advice 'epg--start 'around 'advice-epg-disable-agent)
(ad-activate 'epg--start)Note also there’s a bug in pinentry in GnuPG2, if you run Arch Linux you could install gnupg1 and do (when (file-executable-p "/usr/bin/gpg1") (setq epg-gpg-program "/usr/bin/gpg1")) to make it use gpg1 on your Arch boxen.
I have removed ‘gpg-agent’. Of course, it totally solved the problem with the GUI dialog. In Ubuntu, ‘gpg-agent’ is used by default as a replacement for ‘ssh-agent’. When ‘gpg-agent’ is deleted, ‘ssh-agent’ is used. So, no visible losses. --DmitriMinaev
With Emacs 23 and the default epg that comes bundled. I am able to save (and encrypt) a *.gpg file, but when I try to reopen it in emacs, I get the following: ‘File exists, but cannot be read’. I am able to decrypt it fine outside of emacs with gpg -d Running ‘M-x epa-decrypt-file RET FILENAME’ on the same file gives the following error: ‘Decrypting test4.gpg…0% (0/674) epg-decrypt-file: Wrong type argument: listp, exit ‘
Any thoughts or comments would be much appreciated!!
You can use public key to save(encrypt) a *.gpg file, and only use private key to (re)open(or decrypt) it. If you are the public key’s owner, you can use command
gpg -o [fn] --export-private-keys -a
to get it and import it to your system.
I was getting the error ‘File exists, but cannot be read’ because emacs could not find the gpg command.
Another way to test if emacs can find it would be to do M-x epa-list-keys
-johan
With Emacs 23 epa-list-keys was working correctly but trying to open a gpg file gave me the error: ‘File exists, but cannot be read’ Downgrading to gpg 1.4.11 from 2.0.16 allowed me to open gpg files again.
-goibhniu
One reason for ‘File exists, but cannot be read’ can be that it cannot find gpg. It is a shame that the error message is so bad.
To fix, you can either set epg-gpg-program to the full path (e.g. /sw/bin/gpg2) or set it to a relative path (e.g. gpg2) and make sure that exec-path contains the right directory. Setting $PATH from inside Emacs is NOT adequate, it has to be in exec-path. (Setting $PATH outside Emacs would probably do but with Emacs.app invoked from Finder that might not be convenient.)
-rjk
I found a problem when I use Wanderlust Version 201107150352 with EasyPG 0.0.16(is this the last one?). I changed Wanderlust throught the emacs customization to put a default “Bcc” pointing to my own mail so I have copies of whatever I send.
; In ~/.emacs says:
'(wl-bcc "My name <my-mail@the-server.com>When I try to send an encrypted mail, for example to myself, it’s says something like
"No public key for my-mail@the-server.com,my-mail@the-server.com; skip it?".
To solve this problem, you must download the source code of epg, and edit epa-mail.el. In the implementation of the function epa-mail-encrypt:
;;;###autoload
(defun epa-mail-encrypt (start end recipients sign signers)there are some lines that says as follow:
(if recipients
(setq recipients (delete ""
(split-string recipients "[ \t\n]+"))))Just change them to this ones:
(if recipients
(setq recipients (delete ""
(split-string recipients "[, \t\n]+"))))Being difficult to find it online I decided to extract and publish the EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual found within the package of Emacs 23.1.
You can find the manual here: http://virgo977virgo.blogspot.com/2009/09/easypg-assistant-users-manual-from.html
AFAIK Gnus now prefers EasyPG for mail encryption (over PGG, mailcrypt…).
A working customization code (April 2011, using Debian, Emacs 23, No Gnus 0.16 (git version) and GnuPG 1) follows:
(require 'epg-config)
(setq mml2015-use 'epg
mml2015-verbose t
epg-user-id gpgpgpkeyID
mml2015-encrypt-to-self t
mml2015-always-trust nil
mml2015-cache-passphrase t
mml2015-passphrase-cache-expiry '36000
mml2015-sign-with-sender t
gnus-message-replyencrypt t
gnus-message-replysign t
gnus-message-replysignencrypted t
gnus-treat-x-pgp-sig t
;; mm-sign-option 'guided
;; mm-encrypt-option 'guided
mm-verify-option 'always
mm-decrypt-option 'always
gnus-buttonized-mime-types
'("multipart/alternative"
"multipart/encrypted"
"multipart/signed")
epg-debug t ;; then read the *epg-debug*" buffer
)
To solve problems first suppress any “encrypt-to” in your ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf (beware: it can lead to new problems because you may therefore produce cyphered files/mail NOT cyphered using your key)