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Re: pgp signing



On Tuesday, 09.09.2003 at 16:58 +0100, A. S. Budden wrote:

> > > Just noticed a bit of an odd problem.  If I send an email and
> > > select the pgp sign option, it asks me for my passphrase as
> > > expected.  If I'm in an xterm (konsole actually) it works fine, if
> > > I'm in a virtual console (I think that's what it's called -- what
> > > you get by typing Ctrl-Alt-F1), it fails.  Having investigated
> > > this, I think it's got something to do with the fact that in my
> > > password (I hope I'm not giving too much away here), there is the
> > > pound sign (as in GBP -- pounds sterling, shift-3 on a UK
> > > keyboard).  If I type this symbol at the terminal prompt, it
> > > appears as expected, but if I type it in any of the mutt prompts,
> > > nothing happens at all.
> > > 
> > > Can anyone offer any suggestions please?
> > 
> > <serious>Change your passphrase!</serious>
> 
> Why?  It works in virtually every situation I use it (with the
> exception of the above), the pound sign is on every keyboard I ever
> use or am ever likely to use and I would guess (probably with no
> foundation at all) that it's not likely to be used in any brute force
> hacking algorithms.
> 
> If you're going to tell me to change my passphrase in a <serious> way,
> you could at least give me, say, ONE good reason...

OK, here goes ... :-)

The British pound sign is not a 'universal' ASCII character (that's the
wrong term, but hopefully you can see what I mean).  The fact that it's
on the _keyboard_ is irrelevant.  The problem is that the pound sign
might not exist consistently across different locales and other
settings.  If I use a system with French settings, for example, I
wouldn't be surprise if the pound sign failed to work.

In terms of solving your problem, you could investigate the Mutt build
options '--enable-locales-fix' and '--without-wc-funcs'.

This is probably not the right way to fix the problem, but it might
help.

In terms of finding a simple way to solve your problem, the single
easiest thing to change is your passphrase, hence the '<serious>' tag
:-)

Dave.
-- 
Dave Ewart
Dave.Ewart@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Computing Manager, Epidemiology Unit, Oxford
Cancer Research UK
PGP: CC70 1883 BD92 E665 B840 118B 6E94 2CFD 694D E370

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