[MlMt] Problem with GPG encryption

[Robert Goldman]

I don't really understand PGP/GPG, either.  But what I can vaguely glean 
from what I read is that GPG has 2 ways of deciding whether to trust a 
key.  One is based on signatures, and one is based on what I tell it 
(that's what accounts for the 5 and 6 ratings -- me just saying I trust 
this key).  Perhaps the way MailMate interacts with GPG means that it 
uses only the web of trust/signature model and ignores this other thing 
(which may be "user trust," I'm not sure).  I'll dig around and see if I 
can figure it out, and post if I can.

Best,
r


On 28 Sep 2017, at 1:41, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 27 Sep 2017, at 22:00, Robert Goldman wrote:
>
>> Whenever I try to send a message with GPG encryption, I get an 
>> "OpenPGP encryption failed dialog box."  The horrible error message 
>> (I know -- this is GPG's fault, not MailMate's!) looks like this:
>
> The fact that I chose to just pass on the error messages to the user 
> shows that I did not dare to try to “translate” them into 
> something more comprehensible :)
>
>> But the trust level on my recipient's key is 5 and mine is 6.  So why 
>> does this fail?
>
> You need to sign the key, e.g., using the “GPG Keychain” 
> application or `gpg2`. This is not always necessary though. OpenPGP is 
> based on a “web of trust” and there are other ways that `gpg2` 
> might determine that a key is valid. The details can be found in the 
> “Using trust to validate keys” on [this 
> page](https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/x334.html).
>
> I don't claim to understand the details of “trust” and 
> “validity” and I often find it confusing myself. Luckily (for me), 
> all this really happens outside of MailMate. If you want to debug how 
> MailMate uses `gpg2` then you can see how it's used by enabling the 
> `MmDebugSecurity` hidden preference and launching MailMate from a 
> Terminal window. You should be able to simply copy/paste the `gpg2` 
> command and the arguments provided by MailMate if you want to do what 
> MailMate does directly on the command line.
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> -- 
> Benny


> _______________________________________________
> mailmate mailing list
> mailmate at lists.freron.com
> https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freron.com/pipermail/mailmate/attachments/20170928/8f53b099/attachment.html>