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Thread: Seahorse..

  1. #1
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    Seahorse..

    Seahorse is terrible. What exactly is its purpose nowadays? It seems to have lost a lot of functionality it used to have. Now when I launch it, all it does is list my keys. I cannot create new keys. I cannot encrypt or decrypt files. All I can do is look at my keyring. In the past it allowed you to create keys, and it also fit into the Ubuntu menu so that you could right-click a file and hit "encrypt." This functionality is completely gone now. So, again, what is the point of it?

    But the biggest problem with it is that it caches my GPG passphrase indefinitely and there's no way to turn that off. This is a huge security risk. I leave my machine on 24/7 and I do *not* want my gpg key to be unprotected 24/7.

    I am thinking of uninstalling it and just using gpg-agent.
    Occam's Razor for computers: Viruses must never be postulated without necessity -- nevius

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  2. #2
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    Re: Seahorse..

    I was asking this here few times, but got somehow confusing answers.

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1928660

    see answer #10

    but the integration of for example to the text editor is not given at the moment.

    >But the biggest problem with it is that it caches my GPG passphrase indefinitely and there's no way to turn that off. This is a huge security risk. I leave my machine on 24/7 and I do *not* want my gpg key to be unprotected 24/7.<

    this is then th biggest problem I can see, it has to follow the settings in the conf and not any junk transfered one way from the gui.

  3. #3
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    Re: Seahorse..

    Quote Originally Posted by ottosykora View Post
    I was asking this here few times, but got somehow confusing answers.

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1928660

    see answer #10

    but the integration of for example to the text editor is not given at the moment.

    >But the biggest problem with it is that it caches my GPG passphrase indefinitely and there's no way to turn that off. This is a huge security risk. I leave my machine on 24/7 and I do *not* want my gpg key to be unprotected 24/7.<

    this is then th biggest problem I can see, it has to follow the settings in the conf and not any junk transfered one way from the gui.
    Yeah the only way you can clear the password cache is to logout. Then once you log back in and get prompted to enter your GPG password (say for an e-mail) you can then select how long to cache the passphrase. However, this shouldn't be necessary -- there should be a button to press to clear the password instantly and there should be a menu option available at all times that lets you select how long to store it.

    But, again, Seahorse sucks. It has got no functionality. I am not even sure what it's for.
    Occam's Razor for computers: Viruses must never be postulated without necessity -- nevius

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  4. #4
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    Re: Seahorse..

    could you get those seahorse-nautilus installed?

    I have just at the moment no 11.10 or 12.04 here so can not test, on my current computer I have still the 11.04 with all the luxury.

    In fact the passphrase latency should be just in the conf and yes it should have an acces to it all the time. I mean if there is a gui for it it should be able to write and rewrite all the settings at any time and not only those which the dev apparently understood and found interesting just at the moment when he wrote the gui commands.

    Anyway earlier I was told that things like file encryption in the nautilus will come back at least.

    But it was supposed to work somehow different then with the right click menu or what.

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  6. #6
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    Re: Seahorse..

    Quote Originally Posted by ottosykora View Post
    could you get those seahorse-nautilus installed?
    There is no such package in the repos anymore.

    In fact the passphrase latency should be just in the conf and yes it should have an acces to it all the time. I mean if there is a gui for it it should be able to write and rewrite all the settings at any time and not only those which the dev apparently understood and found interesting just at the moment when he wrote the gui commands.
    The GUI in Seahorse is wothless. It has like no options to do anything. All you can do is view your keyring. It's stupid and pointless.

    Anyway earlier I was told that things like file encryption in the nautilus will come back at least.
    Hopefully that is true. I personally don't care about the file encryption option since I am fully comfortable with the command line. What annoys me is the inability to set the password cache time. And if I try to remove seahorse (to use gpg-agent), it wants to take ubuntu-desktop with it.
    Occam's Razor for computers: Viruses must never be postulated without necessity -- nevius

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  7. #7
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    Re: Seahorse..

    either they were using the special repo:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mdeslaur/testing
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install seahorse-plugins

    or it should be called now nautilus-seahorse or seahorse-nautilus, does this ppa exist?

    I was told somewhere that this was the developemnt of the version for the gnome3 etc and would work on 12.04

  8. #8
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    Re: Seahorse..

    do you have gpg 2.x or gpg 1.x?

    if gpg2.x one could use this GPA, which does unfortunately not support gpg 1.x on the other side thus all can lack some means of compatibility to older pgp versions.


    This GPA does not handle all perfect, is also kind of MickeyMouse Picture GUI, but might do the job with file encryption at least.

  9. #9
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    Re: Seahorse..

    got the advise above that there might be something in the univese repo.

    Is it what you installed? If so then it is not what they promissed few months ago.

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1928660&page=2

    #12
    Last edited by ottosykora; April 22nd, 2012 at 05:36 PM.

  10. #10

    Re: Seahorse..

    I found this in the Ubuntu Software Center:


    I already had Passwords and Keys installed. When I installed the other three and restarted, I got two new icons on the Unity panel and options to encrypt and sign in the right click menu. One of the icons is named Verify Signature and the other is Decrypt File. Clicking on either of the icons appears to do nothing. When I use the right-click menu, it takes a little while but eventually I get a prompt asking me either where I want to save the signature or to which key would I like to encrypt the file. When I sign a file, seahorse-nautilus doesn't clearsign it. It saves the signature as an unreadable .sig file. I haven't tested the encryption option because it won't let me encrypt a file to one of my own private keys.

    So, as it stands, I am unaware of a good GUI for GnuPG for Ubuntu.
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