[OpenIndiana-discuss] GPG2 on OI

[stes@PANDORA.BE]

----- Op 30 sep 2021 om 22:29 schreef Discussion list for OpenIndiana openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org:

> In regard to: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] GPG2 on OI, stes at PANDORA.BE said...:
> 
>> If I try it on X11/MATE desktop,
>> then the default /usr/bin/pinentry works using the link to the
>> /usr/lib/pinentry-gtk2,
>> and it asks a passphrase and that works.
>>
>> If I alt+ctrl+F2 to start a console on vt2 (text console) using
>>
>> online         19:11:44 svc:/system/console-login:vt2
>>
>> and then try it in text mode using TERM=sun-color and modify the gpg-agent.conf
>> to set:
>>
>> pinentry-program /usr/lib/pinentry-curses
>>
>> then it uses the curses pinentry but it does not seem to work on the
>> text-console sun-color for me, screen goes blank, no decent curses
>> interface ...
> 
> David, can I get you to test something?
> 
> Repeat the console test you tried, but instead of using TERM=sun-color,
> try
> 
> 	TERM=vt100; export TERM
> 
> and then run the test.
> 
> I'm seeing much different behavior between TERM=xterm and TERM=vt100
> for pinentry, I'm wondering if you get the same results.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tim

when I change on the text login console the TERM from sun-color to vt100,
the pinentry-curses draws a rectangle as follows :

  l qqqqqqqqq k
  x           x
  x           x
  m qqqqqqqqq j

with characters l,k,m,j in the corners and x vertical bar and q horizontal bar

It looks a little ugly but it is visible and indeed more usable.


pinentry-curses is linked against libcurses.so from pkg:/system/library.

That is, it uses /usr/lib/libcurses.so

There is also the GNU libncurses on OpenIndiana ..   That is pkg:/library/ncurses.

I just checked a OmniOS CE community edition install the OmniOS gnupg pinentry uses libncurses ...  it draws a nicer rectangle.

The OmniOS omnios-extra repository seems to use libncurses for pinentry.


Do we know whether the GNUPG developers are testing/developing with GNU libncurses ?

Or whether they have access to a more traditional UNIX system with older original style,
AT&T or BSD curses ?

See history of BSD curses and AT&T curses at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_%28programming_library%29

Regards
David Stes