GPG signing commits over ssh
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I was editing some blog posts over ssh, when I ran into this error. gpg was failing to sign my commits. I realized that this was because I could not answer...

Date: May 8, 2022

I was editing some blog posts over ssh, when I ran into this error. gpg was failing to sign my commits. I realized that this was because I could not answer to the desktop keyring over ssh, but had no idea how to fix it.

[1m[38;2;167;192;128mError[0m
[38;2;71;82;88m─────[0m

This is the error message I was seeing.

[38;2;122;132;120m[code][0m
  gpg failed to sign the data ssh

[1m[38;2;167;192;128mThe fix[0m
[38;2;71;82;88m───────[0m

The fix ended up being pretty simple, but quite a ways down this [4m[38;2;127;187;179mstack overflow post[0m <[38;2;122;132;120mhttps://stackoverflow.com/questions/41052538/git-error-gpg-failed-to-sign-data/41054093[0m>. This environment variable tells gpg that we are not logged into a desktop and it does not try to use the desktop keyring, and asks to unlog the gpgkey right in the terminal.

[38;2;122;132;120m[code][0m
  [38;2;230;126;128mexport[0m[38;2;214;203;180m [0m[38;2;214;203;180mGPG_TTY[0m[38;2;122;132;120m=[0m[38;2;122;132;120m$[0m[38;2;214;203;180m([0m[38;2;214;203;180mtty[0m[38;2;214;203;180m)[0m

[1m[38;2;167;192;128mThe log in menu[0m
[38;2;71;82;88m───────────────[0m

This is what it looks like when it asks for the passphrase.

Image: enter your passphrase to unlock your gpg key <https://images.waylonwalker.com/gpg-passphrase-unlock.png>

[1m[38;2;167;192;128mEDIT-another way[0m
[38;2;71;82;88m────────────────[0m

So this did not fix the issue on Arch BTW, and I have seen it not work for wsl users either. This did work for me and reported to have worked by a wsl user on a github issue.

[38;2;122;132;120m[code][0m
  echo '' | gpg --clearsign

This will unlock the gpg key then let you commit.