topic GnuPG automation in Operating System - Linux

GnuPG automation

Gary Hines — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 08:40:53 GMT

Hi,
I'm having trouble getting a decryption script working using GnuPG. I've tried both expect and python (GnuPGInterface). The Expect script seems to just hang, and the Python script works fine from the command-line, but when I put it into cron, it generates a stack trace error list. Does anybody have a script that does decryption and that can be used from cron without any problems. Thanks for any help and/or pointers.

Gary

Re: GnuPG automation

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 08:50:13 GMT

Hi Gary:

The basic comment I can make is that 'cron' provides a very minimal environment. If the script works correctly from a shell but not under 'cron', a good place to start looking is at environmental variables that you "always" have in your normal shell environment, because they were set in your login profile. For example, 'cron' provides a PATH defined only as '/usr/bin:/usr/sbin'.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: GnuPG automation

Gary Hines — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 09:34:19 GMT

Hi James,
I didn't even think of that. Now that I modified the path, it seems to make a difference, but I'm getting a different error which seems strange. I'm wondering if someone here could shed some light on it. The error is:

gpg: cannot open '/dev/tty': No such device or address

It seems totally bizarre that it can't open a tty.

Gary

Re: GnuPG automation

Peter Nikitka — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:06:41 GMT

No,

its normal in cron not having a tty:
cron is a daemon, not sitting in front of a terminal.
Think of the classical 'who' command - ever tried to call it in cron?

Look for options that fulfill ALL information GnuPG requests; perhaps you can supply some information via a pipe:
echo 'input
input' | GnuPG

mfG Peter

Re: GnuPG automation

Gary Hines — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 08:29:54 GMT

Still don't have it working. It seems GPG just doesn't want to work without a TTY. I guess I'm going to have to break down, and write a script to control it from a windows telnet session. Thanks for the pointers though.