Introduction to GnuPG
The GnuPG package is GNU's tool for secure communication and data storage. It can be used to encrypt data and to create digital signatures. It includes an advanced key management facility and is compliant with the proposed OpenPGP Internet standard as described in RFC2440 and the S/MIME standard as described by several RFCs. GnuPG 2 is the stable version of GnuPG integrating support for OpenPGP and S/MIME.
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.
Package Information
Additional Downloads
GnuPG 2 Dependencies
Required
libassuan-2.5.6, libgcrypt-1.10.3, libksba-1.6.5, npth-1.6, and OpenLDAP-2.6.6
Recommended
GnuTLS-3.8.3 (required to communicate with keyservers using https or hkps protocol) and pinentry-1.2.1 (Run-time requirement for most of the package's functionality)
Optional
cURL-8.5.0, Fuse-3.16.2, ImageMagick-7.1.1-15 (for the convert utility, used for generating the documentation), libusb-1.0.26, an MTA, SQLite-3.45.0, texlive-20230313 (or install-tl-unx), fig2dev (for generating documentation), and GNU adns
Installation of GnuPG
First, fix a compatibility issue with emacs:
patch -Np1 -i ../gnupg-2.4.3-emacs-1.patch
Install GnuPG by running the following commands:
mkdir build &&
cd build &&
../configure --prefix=/usr \
--localstatedir=/var \
--sysconfdir=/etc \
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3 &&
make &&
makeinfo --html --no-split -I doc -o doc/gnupg_nochunks.html ../doc/gnupg.texi &&
makeinfo --plaintext -I doc -o doc/gnupg.txt ../doc/gnupg.texi &&
make -C doc html
If you have texlive-20230313 installed and you wish to create documentation in alternate formats, issue the following commands (fig2dev is needed for the ps format):
make -C doc pdf ps
To test the results, issue: make check.
Now, as the root user:
make install &&
install -v -m755 -d /usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3/html &&
install -v -m644 doc/gnupg_nochunks.html \
/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3/html/gnupg.html &&
install -v -m644 ../doc/*.texi doc/gnupg.txt \
/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3 &&
install -v -m644 doc/gnupg.html/* \
/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3/html
If you created alternate formats of the documentation, install them using the following command as the root user:
install -v -m644 doc/gnupg.{pdf,dvi,ps} \
/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3
Command Explanations
mkdir build && cd build: the Gnupg2 developers recommend to build the package in a dedicated directory.
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3: This switch changes the default docdir to /usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3.
--enable-all-tests: This switch allows more tests to be run with make check.
--enable-g13: This switch enables building the g13 program.
Contents
Installed Programs: addgnupghome, applygnupgdefaults, dirmngr, dirmngr-client, g13 (optional), gpg-agent, gpg-card, gpg-connect-agent, gpg, gpgconf, gpgparsemail, gpgscm, gpgsm, gpgsplit, gpgtar, gpgv, gpg-wks-client, gpg-wks-server, kbxutil, and watchgnupg
Installed Libraries: None
Installed Directories: /usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.3 and /usr/share/gnupg
Short Descriptions
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addgnupghome
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is used to create and populate a user's ~/.gnupg directories
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applygnupgdefaults
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is a wrapper script used to run gpgconf with the --apply-defaults parameter on all user's GnuPG home directories
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dirmngr
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is a tool that takes care of accessing the OpenPGP keyservers
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dirmngr-client
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is a tool to contact a running dirmngr and test whether a certificate has been revoked
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g13
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is a tool to create, mount or unmount an encrypted file system container (optional)
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gpg-agent
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is a daemon used to manage secret (private) keys independently from any protocol. It is used as a backend for gpg and gpgsm as well as for a couple of other utilities
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gpg-card
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is a tool to manage smart cards and tokens
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gpg-connect-agent
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is a utility used to communicate with a running gpg-agent
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gpg
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is the OpenPGP part of the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG). It is a tool used to provide digital encryption and signing services using the OpenPGP standard
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gpgconf
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is a utility used to automatically and reasonably safely query and modify configuration files in the ~/.gnupg home directory. It is designed not to be invoked manually by the user, but automatically by graphical user interfaces
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gpgparsemail
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is a utility currently only useful for debugging. Run it with --help for usage information
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gpgscm
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executes the given scheme program or spawns an interactive shell
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gpgsm
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is a tool similar to gpg used to provide digital encryption and signing services on X.509 certificates and the CMS protocol. It is mainly used as a backend for S/MIME mail processing
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gpgsplit
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splits an OpenPGP message into packets
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gpgtar
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is a tool to encrypt or sign files into an archive
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gpgv
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is a verify only version of gpg
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gpg-wks-client
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is a client for the Web Key Service protocol
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gpg-wks-server
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provides a server for the Web Key Service protocol
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kbxutil
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is used to list, export and import Keybox data
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watchgnupg
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is used to listen to a Unix Domain socket created by any of the GnuPG tools
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