Enigmail secret key needed to decrypt message

I'm also willing to bet that running "gpg --list-packets" or "pgpdump" which just makes the --list-packets option easier to read on that file you'll find that the message was only encrypted to your friend's key. Sounds stupid, but make sure you are not mixing up gpg keys and ssh keys. That's just the kind of brain fart that will have you tearing your hair out. That's why I keep my hair short :. I just had exactly the same thing happen as the OP but it was a different cause. I eventually noticed that Thunderbird Enigmail was looking in the keyring of gpg2 while I had used gpg to create the latest key pair.

You can check if it is in gpg and bring it across:. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Asked 8 years, 4 months ago. Appreciate the advise. I deleted everything I had done and started again from scratch. I have no idea what I did differently from the first time, but it worked this time around! The message wasn't encrypted to your public key.

The sender must encrypt the message to your key for you to be able to decrypt it. Removing that line or installing pinentry-qt4 solved the problem for me. Ubuntu Community Ask! Sign up to join this community.

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 7 years ago. Active 4 years, 4 months ago.

Viewed 10k times. Thanks a lot in advance and cheers, Robert EDIT: Maybe this helps: I can not sign messages on the computer that cannot decrypt, but I can sign on my other machine. Improve this question. SmCaterpillar SmCaterpillar 1 1 gold badge 2 2 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges.

It might happen you deselected the feature to also encrypt for yourself in Enigmail's configuration. The message is encrypted. Also there is no difference if I send myself an encrypted message or someone else does with my public key. I can decrypt both on one laptopt but not on the other. I sometimes experience weird behaviour with Enigmail, in which case I save the encrypted message as an. This gpg -d works just fine. I am prompted to enter my passphrase and the message is decrypted.

Thus, somehow Enigmail messes up asking me for my pgp passphrase, but why? Show 1 more comment. Active Oldest Votes. Let us know if you succeed. Thank you. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Buy Me a Coffee. Thursday, December 23, Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Password recovery. Email Encryption Enigmail Security. Please enter your comment! Please enter your name here.