gnupg

                   The GNU Privacy Guard
                  =======================
                       Version 2.5

      Copyright 1997-2019 Werner Koch
      Copyright 1998-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
      Copyright 2003-2026 g10 Code GmbH

• INTRODUCTION

  GnuPG is a complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC4880 (also known as PGP). GnuPG enables encryption and signing of data and communication, and features a versatile key management system as well as access modules for public key directories.

  GnuPG, also known as GPG, is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications. A wealth of frontend applications and libraries are available that make use of GnuPG. Starting with version 2 GnuPG provides support for S/MIME and Secure Shell in addition to OpenPGP.

  GnuPG is Free Software (meaning that it respects your freedom). It can be freely used, modified and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

  Note that this is considered the stable version of GnuPG.

• BUILD INSTRUCTIONS

  GnuPG 2.6 depends on the following GnuPG related packages:

  npth (https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/npth/) libgpg-error (https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/libgpg-error/) libgcrypt (https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/libgcrypt/) libksba (https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/libksba/) libassuan (https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/libassuan/)

  You should get the latest versions of course, the GnuPG configure script complains if a version is not sufficient.

  Several other standard libraries are also required. The configure script prints diagnostic messages if one of these libraries is not available and a feature will not be available.

  You also need the Pinentry package for most functions of GnuPG; however it is not a build requirement. Pinentry is available at https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/pinentry/ .

  After building and installing the above packages in the order as given above, you may continue with GnuPG installation (you may also just try to build GnuPG to see whether your already installed versions are sufficient).

  As with all packages, you just have to do

  mkdir build cd build ../configure make make check make install

  The "make check" is optional but highly recommended. To run even more tests you may add "--enable-all-tests" to the configure run. Before running the "make install" you might need to become root.

  If everything succeeds, you have a working GnuPG with support for OpenPGP, S/MIME, ssh-agent, and smartcards.

  In case of problem please ask on the gnupg-users@gnupg.org mailing list for advise.

  Instruction on how to build for Windows can be found in the file doc/HACKING in the section "How to build an installer for Windows". This requires some experience as developer.

  You may run

  gpgconf -L

  to view the directories used by GnuPG.

** Quick build method on Unix

To quickly build all required software without installing it, the Speedo target may be used. But first you need to make sure that the toolchain is installed. On a Debian based system it should be sufficient to run as root:

apt-get install build-essential libusb-1.0-0-dev libsqlite3-dev \
                libldap-dev libreadline-dev patchelf

(libldap-dev and libreadline-dev are not strictly necessary but are highly suggested.)

Then as regular user run

make -f build-aux/speedo.mk native

This target downloads all required libraries and does a native build of GnuPG to PLAY/inst/. After the build the entire software including all libraries can be installed into an arbitrary location using for example:

make -f build-aux/speedo.mk install SYSROOT=/usr/local/gnupg26

and run the binaries like

/usr/local/gnupg26/bin/gpg

which will also start any daemon from the same directory. Make sure to stop already running daemons or use a different GNUPGHOME.

If you want to use the gnupg-w32-n.m.n_somedate.tar.xz tarball you only need to change the first make invocation to

  make -f build-aux/speedo.mk this-native

The advantage of this alternative tarball is that all libraries are included and thus the Makefile does not need to download new tarballs. Note that in any case all downloaded files come with signatures which are verified by the Makefile commands. The patchelf command is required to change the search path for the shared libraries in the binaries to relative directories.

** Specific build problems on some machines:

*** Apple OSX 10.x using XCode

On some versions the correct location of a header file can't be detected by configure. To fix that you should run configure like this

./configure  gl_cv_absolute_stdint_h=/usr/include/stdint.h

Add other options as needed.

*** Cygwin

Although Cygwin (Posix emulation on top of Windows) is not officially supported, GnuPG can be build for that platform. It might be required to invoke configure like this:

./configure  ac_cv_type_SOCKET=no

*** Systems without a full C99 compiler

If you run into problems with your compiler complaining about dns.c you may use

./configure --disable-libdns

Add other options as needed.

• RECOMMENDATIONS

** Key database daemon

Since version 2.3.0 it is possible to store the keys in an SQLite database instead of the keyring.kbx file. This is in particular useful for large keyrings or if many instances of gpg and gpgsm may run concurrently. This is implemented using another daemon process, the "keyboxd". To enable the use of the keyboxd put the option "use-keyboxd" into the configuration file ~/.gnupg/common.conf or the global /etc/gnupg/common.conf. See also doc/examples/common.conf. Only public keys and X.509 certificates are managed by the keyboxd; private keys are still stored as separate files.

Since version 2.4.1 the keyboxd will be used by default for a fresh install; i.e. if a ~/.gnupg directory did not yet exist.

Note that there is no automatic migration; if the use-keyboxd option is enabled keys are not taken from pubring.kbx. To migrate existing keys to the keyboxd do this:

1. Disable the keyboxd (remove use-keyboxd from common.conf)
2. Export all public keys gpg --export --export-options backup > allkeys.gpg gpgsm --export --armor > allcerts.gpg
3. Enable the keyboxd (add use-keyboxd to common.conf)
4. Import all public keys gpg --import --import-options restore < allkeys.gpg gpgsm --import < allcerts.crt

In case the keyboxd is not able to startup due to a stale lockfile created by another host, the command

 gpgconf --unlock pubring.db

can be used to remove the lock file.

** Socket directory

GnuPG uses Unix domain sockets to connect its components (on Windows an emulation of these sockets is used). Depending on the type of the file system, it is sometimes not possible to use the GnuPG home directory (i.e. ~/.gnupg) as the location for the sockets. To solve this problem GnuPG prefers the use of a per-user directory below the the /run (or /var/run) hierarchy for the sockets. It is thus suggested to create per-user directories on system or session startup. For example, the following snippet can be used in /etc/rc.local to create these directories:

  [ ! -d /run/user ] && mkdir /run/user
  awk -F: </etc/passwd '$3 >= 1000 && $3 < 65000 {print $3}' \
    | ( while read uid rest; do
          if [ ! -d "/run/user/$uid" ]; then
            mkdir /run/user/$uid
            chown $uid /run/user/$uid
            chmod 700 /run/user/$uid
          fi
        done )

** Conflicts with systemd socket activation

Some Linux distribution use the meanwhile deprecated --supervised option with gpg-agent, dirmngr, and keyboxd. The idea is that the systemd process launches the daemons as soon as gpg or gpgsm try to access them. However, this creates a race condition with GnuPG's own on-demand launching of these daemon. It also conflicts with the remote use gpg-agent because the no-autostart feature on the remote site will not work as expected.

If your systems already comes with a systemd enabled GnuPG, you should thus tell it not to start its own GnuPG daemons by running the following three commands once:

systemctl --user mask --now gpg-agent.service \
          gpg-agent.socket gpg-agent-ssh.socket \
          gpg-agent-extra.socket gpg-agent-browser.socket
systemctl --user mask --now dirmngr.service dirmngr.socket
systemctl --user mask --now keyboxd.service keyboxd.socket

This way all GnuPG components can handle the startup of their daemons on their own and start the correct version.

The only problem is that for using GnuPG's ssh-agent protocol support, the gpg-agent must have been started before ssh. This can either be done with an ssh wrapper running

gpg-connect-agent updatestartuptty /bye

for each new tty or by using that command directly after login when the anyway required SSH_AUTH_SOCK envvar is set (see the example in the gpg-agent man page).

• DOCUMENTATION

  The complete documentation is in the texinfo manual named `gnupg.info'. Run "info gnupg" to read it. If you want a printable copy of the manual, change to the "doc" directory and enter "make pdf" For a HTML version enter "make html" and point your browser to gnupg.html/index.html. Standard man pages for all components are provided as well. An online version of the manual is available at [[https://gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/]] . A version of the manual pertaining to the current development snapshot is at [[https://gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg-devel/]] .

• Using the legacy version GnuPG 1.4

  The 1.4 version of GnuPG is only intended to allow decryption of old data material using legacy keys which are not anymore supported by GnuPG 2.x. To install both versions alongside, it is suggested to rename the 1.4 version of "gpg" to "gpg1" as well as the corresponding man page. Newer releases of the 1.4 branch will likely do this by default.

• HOW TO GET MORE INFORMATION

  A description of new features and changes since version 2.1 can be found in the file "doc/whats-new-in-2.1.txt" and online at "https://gnupg.org/faq/whats-new-in-2.1.html" .

  The primary WWW page is "https://gnupg.org" The primary FTP site is "https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/"

  See [[https://gnupg.org/download/mirrors.html]] for a list of mirrors and use them if possible. You may also find GnuPG mirrored on some of the regular GNU mirrors.

  We have some mailing lists dedicated to GnuPG:

  gnupg-announce@gnupg.org For important announcements like new versions and such stuff. This is a moderated list and has very low traffic. Do not post to this list.

  gnupg-users@gnupg.org For general user discussion and help.

  gnupg-devel@gnupg.org GnuPG developers main forum.

  You subscribe to one of the list by sending mail with a subject of "subscribe" to x-request@gnupg.org, where x is the name of the mailing list (gnupg-announce, gnupg-users, etc.). See for archives of the mailing lists.