pinentry-gnome3 breaks gpg-agent

[James Hebden]

Ubuntu version: 16.10
Desktop environment: i3

Attempting to decrypt a previously encrypted file:

gpg: public key decryption failed: Operation cancelled
gpg: decryption failed: No secret key

strace -f -F of a gpg decrypt shows the following:
[pid 17851] read(6, "INQUIRE PINENTRY_LAUNCHED 17853\n", 1002) = 32
[pid 17851] write(6, "END", 3) = 3
[pid 17851] write(6, "\n", 1) = 1
[pid 17851] read(6, "ERR 83886179 Operation cancelled"..., 1002) = 44
[pid 17851] write(2, "gpg: decryption failed: No secre"..., 37gpg: decryption failed: No secret key) = 37

switching to pinentry-gtk-2 seems to fix this problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[niknah (hankin0)]

In ubuntu 18.04 it doesn't ask for the pin when I'm logged in via ssh without a DISPLAY= variable.

Tried adding "pinentry-program /usr/bin/pinentry-curses" to ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf but it didn't help.

I had to remove pinentry-gnome3 to get gpg working when logged in via ssh.