git - gpg onto mac osx: error: gpg failed to sign

Question

I installed GPG from brew.

brew install gpg

It is gnupg2-2.0.30_2.

When I commit, I do get a error message:

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "Max Mustermann (mycomment) <[e-mail]>"
2048-bit RSA key, ID 1111AAAA, created 2017-01-05 

error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

I used the command:

gpg --list-secret-keys | grep ^sec

and it gives me back:

sec   2048R/1111AAAA 2017-01-05

Then I used this command:

git config --global user.signingkey 1111AAAA

commit gives me back the same error message.

How can I solve this problem?

Answer 1

If you’re not getting prompted at all for a passphrase (you don’t mention whether you are or not…), the solution may just be to also install a program to facilitate that. The most common is pinentry.

brew install pinentry-mac

So installing that and trying again may get things working. But if not, another thing to do is make sure git it using/finding the right GPG program. These days you really should be using gpg2, so if you don’t already have that installed, do:

brew install gnupg2

And then, to tell git that’s the GPG program want to you, this:

git config --global gpg.program gpg2

At that point, try your commit again and things may just work.

But if not, then try this:

echo "pinentry-program /usr/local/bin/pinentry-mac" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf

…and then try again.

Note: Per some comments below, in order for this change to take effect, you apparently might need to reboot after making the change.