Enigmail errors on Vista Ultimate

  • Thread starter Thread starter Neil Jones
  • Start date Start date
N

Neil Jones

I am running Thunderbird 2.0 on Vista Ultimate. In the past versions of
Thunderbird and Windows, I had Enigmail working fine. This time around
I am getting some errors messages.

Here are the installation details:

OS - Vista Ultimate
Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 - Works fine
Gpg4win 1.1.3 - Works fine (can list private and public keys)
Enigmail 0.95.7 - Does not work with the existing keys listed in GPG.


Here are the error messages that I am getting:

___________________________

C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\gpg.exe --charset utf8 --batch --no-tty
--status-fd 2 --with-fingerprint --fixed-list-mode --with-colons
--list-secret-keys

gpg: Oops; key lost!
node 0097AC00 01/00 type=public-key keyid=XXXXXXXX a=17 u=13 ..v.
node 0097AB20 00/00 type=user-id
<snip>
___________________________

Any ideas how to import keys in Enigmail's key chain on Vista?

Thank you in advance.

NJ
 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Neil Jones said:
I am running Thunderbird 2.0 on Vista Ultimate. In the past versions of
Thunderbird and Windows, I had Enigmail working fine. This time around
I am getting some errors messages.
Click to expand...

I spent some more time stressing enigmail 0.95.7 on 32bit Vista
home premium. I could not get it to break. It seems to be working
fine for me.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAklApbkACgkQvmGe70vHPUOUDQCg/QK3HQJe13YuUk3oS+HRJ+2f
0D8An3Odvkmjzv8iDbvGAnctOARa/N2+
=09aE
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
 
Neil said:
I spent some more time stressing enigmail 0.95.7 on 32bit Vista
home premium. I could not get it to break. It seems to be working
fine for me.
Click to expand...

Thank you for replying and trying this out! I would hate to reinstall
Thunderbird/ggp4win/enigmail from scratch (especially after configuring
all the settings). I guess I will create a backup and try to reinstall
this weekend.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you once again for trying to help.

NJ
 
Neil said:
I spent some more time stressing enigmail 0.95.7 on 32bit Vista
home premium. I could not get it to break. It seems to be working
fine for me.
Click to expand...

I have uninstalled Enigmail, Thunderbird followed by GPG (gpg4win and
GPG). None of the data files in the "AppData" directory were deleted.
Then I repeated by installing in the following order - GPG (not gpg4win)
followed by Thunderbird and then Enigmail.

Enigmail still shows the same error message as previously stated.

I will see if generating keys will make any difference. (I would prefer
to use my existing keys from the key ring).

NJ
 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Neil Jones said:
I will see if generating keys will make any difference. (I would prefer
to use my existing keys from the key ring).
Click to expand...

I am using a keyring copied from unix. So it should not be necessary
to generate the keys there. It might need a gnupg keyring rather
than a pgp keyring, but converting them is possible if that's
the problem.

Is it possible that you have some other version of gpg somewhere on
your path, and enigmail is getting the wrong one? Maybe use a
command prompt, and try

gpg --list-keys
gpg --version

to see if the command line is working, and if it is the version
you think you installed (I am seeing version 1.4.7). As I recall,
"gpg4win" installs a command line version of gpg in
C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\pub
and adds that to your PATH. I'm not certain, but I think enigmail is
searching the path rather than looking in the registry to locate gpg.

I think the software is looking in
C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\GnuPG
for the keyrings. However, Vista is treating "Documents and
Settings" and "Application Data" as symbolic references to other
directories, so that directory should actually turn out to be
C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\GnuPG
(replace "user" by the login account name in Vista).

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAklEVGMACgkQvmGe70vHPUMF8QCeM4ZtBRojoWAt0OhdrB625zl9
VfcAoMPy053lm/xG+DIgVv/b4qg3PUWl
=Ovss
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
 
Neil Jones said:
Then I repeated by installing in the following order - GPG (not gpg4win)
followed by Thunderbird and then Enigmail.
Click to expand...

I missed that you did not install gpg4win this time.

Looking back at your earlier message, I think gpg is not finding
your keyrings.

Earlier versions, or versions not from gpg4win, are possibly
expecting keyrings in a different place. And, as I recall, registry
entries used with earlier versions are different from the registry
entries used with gpg4win.

If you open a command prompt, and run

gpg --help

then the first or second line of output should be the directory
where it is looking for your keyrings.
 
Neil said:
I missed that you did not install gpg4win this time.

Looking back at your earlier message, I think gpg is not finding
your keyrings.

Earlier versions, or versions not from gpg4win, are possibly
expecting keyrings in a different place. And, as I recall, registry
entries used with earlier versions are different from the registry
entries used with gpg4win.

If you open a command prompt, and run

gpg --help

then the first or second line of output should be the directory
where it is looking for your keyrings.
Click to expand...

Ok! This is what happened. It looks like the key files in
"AppData\Roaming\gnupg" directory were corrupted. I have pretty much
tried every book in the trade and failed to get Enigmail to read the
keys. The final litmus test was I uploaded these files to a Linux
system and tried to import them into Thunderbird/Enigmail setup. Voila
and it failed.

Very fortunately I did save the keys at a different directory. I copied
these files over and TB/GPG/Enigmail work like a charm. :-)

Special Thanks to Neil for troubleshooting to get it to work!

Hopefully, this will save some frustrating time to other folks with
broken key files/rings.

Have a great evening everyone.

NJ
 
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