pinentry does not work properly

[zhangyoufu]

printf "$PE_PROMPT" | $PE does not work for me on macOS.

$ PE_PROMPT='SETPROMPT Admin PIN\nGETPIN\nBYE\n'
$ PE=/usr/local/bin/pinentry
$ printf "$PE_PROMPT" | $PE
OK Pleased to meet you
OK
S ERROR curses.? 83918950
ERR 83918950 Inappropriate ioctl for device <Pinentry>
OK closing connection

$ /usr/local/bin/pinentry -h
pinentry-curses (pinentry) 1.0.0
Copyright (C) 2016 g10 Code GmbH
License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Usage: pinentry-curses [options] (-h for help)
Ask securely for a secret and print it to stdout.
Options:
 -d, --debug                Turn on debugging output
 -D, --display DISPLAY      Set the X display
 -T, --ttyname FILE         Set the tty terminal node name
 -N, --ttytype NAME         Set the tty terminal type
 -C, --lc-ctype STRING      Set the tty LC_CTYPE value
 -M, --lc-messages STRING   Set the tty LC_MESSAGES value
 -o, --timeout SECS         Timeout waiting for input after this many seconds
 -g, --no-global-grab       Grab keyboard only while window is focused
 -W, --parent-wid           Parent window ID (for positioning)
 -c, --colors STRING        Set custom colors for ncurses

Please report bugs to <https://bugs.gnupg.org>.

[a-dma]

Interesting, this seems to be an issue with pinentry-curses not being able to understand which tty to use.

After a quick test I got the following to work:

TTY=$(tty)
printf "SETPROMPT Admin PIN\nGETPIN\nBYE\n" | /usr/bin/pinentry-curses --ttyname $TTY

Keep in mind that you may have to change the path to your actual pinentry program (you seem to use /usr/local/bin)

Ideally you should have GPG_TTY already set to the output of tty, so the following should also work

printf "SETPROMPT Admin PIN\nGETPIN\nBYE\n" | /usr/bin/pinentry-curses --ttyname $GPG_TTY

Surprisingly, this solution did not work:

printf "SETPROMPT Admin PIN\nGETPIN\nBYE\n" | /usr/bin/pinentry-curses --ttyname $(tty)

And finally, as a last resort, you can try using a different pinentry program like pinentry-tty or pinentry-x11.

Let me know if the first solution works for you and I'll try to generalize and incorporate it.

[zhangyoufu]

Let me know if the first solution works for you and I'll try to generalize and incorporate it.

The first solution worked for me.

---

Surprisingly, this solution did not work:

printf "SETPROMPT Admin PIN\nGETPIN\nBYE\n" | /usr/bin/pinentry-curses --ttyname $(tty)

It seems that for some shell, $(tty) is evaluated with stdin redirected, so not a tty.