---
title: "GPG signing commits over ssh"
description: "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: 2022-05-08
published: false
tags:
  - git
template: til
---


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.

## Error

This is the error message I was seeing.

```
gpg failed to sign the data ssh
```

## The fix

The fix ended up being pretty simple, but quite a ways down this [stack overflow post](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41052538/git-error-gpg-failed-to-sign-data/41054093).
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.

``` bash
export GPG_TTY=$(tty)
```

## The log in menu

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

![enter your passphrase to unlock your gpg key](https://images.waylonwalker.com/gpg-passphrase-unlock.png)

## EDIT-another way

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.

``` bash
echo '' | gpg --clearsign
```

This will unlock the gpg key then let you commit.