Git GPG signing fails without a clear message

user_2764373 0
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If I set my Git to sign with my GPG key it fails. I've tried GIT_TRACE and it doesn't really give me any more info:

$ GIT_TRACE=1 git commit
15:29:35.112157 git.c:344               trace: built-in: git 'commit'
15:29:35.115745 run-command.c:626       trace: run_command: 'code --wait' '/Users/b/VurbAgency/haarlem.github.io/.git/COMMIT_EDITMSG'
15:29:52.884006 run-command.c:626       trace: run_command: 'gpg' '--status-fd=2' '-bsau' 'SECRETKEYID'
error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

When I try to run 'gpg' '--status-fd=2' '-bsau' 'SECRETKEYID' it just hangs after saying BEGIN_SIGNING H8 and doesn't do anything anymore.

Any ideas on how to solve this or avenues as to research?

gnupg github git
4 Answers

I stumbled upon this when encountering the same error and I was already on the latest version of gpg (2.2.17). For me, it turned out to be multiple things.

  1. Before committing I had to run $ export GPG_TTY=$(tty). This then prompted the passphrase prompt to appear.
  2. If I used a passphrase with a special character it didn't work (the prompt said I had a bad passphrase when trying to use), so I had to only use alphanumeric characters.

And if you're doing this to get verified commits on GitHub ensure the name and email address match what you have on GitHub.

user_123927550

I've updated GPG on my mac using brew upgrade gpg after I saw my GPG was at version 2.2.5 and the newest was 2.2.10.

This has fixed the issue, for now. However, I still have no idea about what the cause of this problem was.

user_27643730

If you have installed gpg using Homebrew, and are also using GPGTools, you need to uninstall Homebrew's gpg.

# Uninstall gpg in homebrew so that it uses the gpg in GPGTools instead
$ brew uninstall gpg

# You might need to do some extra cleanup afterward as well:
$ rm -r /opt/homebrew/etc/gnupg

# Restart the gpg-agent so that it uses the correct one:
$ gpgconf --kill gpg-agent

After that, git was able to sign my commits again.

user_6118490

I ran into the same issue. In the GnuPG configuration file ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf, the pinentry-program path was pointing to pinentry-mac, which was missing.

Running brew install pinentry-mac fixed it.

user_53149380
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