gpg-agent not launched correctly in Xsesson scripts

[Polar]

Binary package hint: gnupg-agent

The 90gpg-agent script incorrectly assumes that by calling gpg-agent without arguments it will not create another gpg-agent. I find this assumption to be false. Thereby, it creates an orphan gpg-agent or not one at all. The correct way to check for it would be to use gpg-connect-agent. I have a patch for this.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gnupg-agent 2.0.14-1.1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-28.49-generic 2.6.35.11
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Mar 26 14:55:26 2011
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnupg2

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Roy Liu (royliu)]

I don't think the patch above works, for the reason that invoking gpg-agent without arguments achieves the same effect as invoking gpg-connect-agent with an empty stdin. Notice that the return code for former is 0 if the gpg-agent could be detected and 2 if not. The issue is that since the gpg-agent-info file is in a non-standard location, it has to be sourced to get the GPG_AGENT_INFO variable, which the startup script does. Unfortunately, GPG_AGENT_INFO isn't visible to the {gpg-agent, gpg-agent-connect} test process since it's not exported. That means the test process would give a nonzero return and cause an orphaned gpg-agent process to be spawned. A simple fix would be to export the GPG_AGENT_INFO variable, which is what I proposed in my bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/804641.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

FWIW, the assumption that calling gpg-agent without arguments will not create another gpg-agent instance does seem to hold true for lucid for me. Maybe this changed in 10.10?

$ pidof gpg-agent
1821
$ gpg-agent
gpg-agent: gpg-agent running and available
$ pidof gpg-agent
1821