[Gpg4win-users-en] Problem caching passphrase?

[Werner Koch]

On Mon,  1 Feb 2010 21:47, chd at chud.net said:

> My problem is that gpg-agent (I assume) appears to want to cache my

Right, that is one of gpg-agent's tasks.

> once I was able to locate gpg-agent.conf I saw that it also reflected
> the new values), but I still get prompted for my passphrase more often
> than I should.

There is a second limit built into the cache.  From the man page:

  --default-cache-ttl n
              Set the time a cache entry is valid to n seconds.  The
              default are 600 seconds.

  --max-cache-ttl n
              Set the maximum time a cache entry is valid to n seconds.
              After this time a cache entry will get expired even if it
              has been accessed recently.  The default are 2 hours (7200
              seconds).

Thus you will get a prompt after 2 hours unless you change that limit.
To change that limit using a GUI you need to use GPA: Use the backend
preferences menu option and switch to expert mode using the selection
box in the upper right.  This shows the max-cache-ttl entry.

Another reason why you might see more prompts that expected is due to
the cache working on a per-key base.  Now an OpenPGP certificate usually
has two keys: One for signing and one for encryption.  Although pretty
rare, they might have different passphrases and thus gpg-agent needs to
cache them individually.

If you change certain options the gpg-agent's cache is flushed.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner


-- 
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