gpg: signing failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

[yveoch]

When trying to use the bash+curl verifying method on a server, this cryptic error message might happen:

gpg: signing failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Since this is a fatal error and also quite difficult to debug, maybe the fix could be put somewhere (in the provided command line?):

export GPG_TTY=$(tty)

source

[diego898]

I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you!

[cfig]

@dryvenn You are a life saver! THX!

[dminca]

You're a saviour! Helped me on Fedora.

[danduk82]

really thanks a lot

[boltzjf]

Wow, you are so cool, helped me a lot!

Thank you so so much!!!

[kenvac]

Thanks a tonne man!!. Helped me on debian 9.

[Turini]

helped me a lot also! thank you

[TheOpenDevProject]

Cheers!.

[tejasmob]

You're truly rockstar man! 🥇
Thanks!

[ivy-dong]

Amazing
really thanks a lot

[abhi-jha]

Oh wow. And I was pulling my hair that my key has expired which it definitely didn't. I don't know why I was thinking its 2019 for some reason. Thank you.

[netsafe]

works inside a docker container Deian stretch both host and container

[hlzhang]

Sadly, no tty on travis-ci or appveyor.
GPG 2.1.11 comes with ubuntu 16.04 throw out a invalid error if I add 'pinentry-mode loopback' into ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf.
Various versions of gpg wasted lot of my time and I think it is a piece of shit, they don't test it on different environments?

[jamesdbloom]

This doesn't work for me because when I add that setting GPG doesn't sign some artefacts properly anymore.

[netsafe]

@chshawkn Travis-CI - in my opinion - is a very questionable CI solution... Call me classy, but I'm still using Jenkins and it never ever failed me regardless of the task and environment I used. With Windows slave all the problems were gone when I used WinSSHD - just write your scripts properly and have fun

[hlzhang]

@netsafe Thanks for your advice. I use Gitlab CI/CD and Jenkins on private projects. Travis-CI is for public repositories.

I've solved the GPG issues on Gitlab CI/CD, Travis-CI and AppVeyor, one script works on all CI platforms.

see: https://github.com/ci-and-cd/maven-build/blob/develop/src/main/ci-script/lib_ci.sh#L702

[rootVIII]

worked for me on Ubuntu 18... thanks

[svenluijten]

I cannot thank you enough! ❤️ Hours were lost debugging this 🙈

[maxtaco]

Wow, can't believe how many thumbs this issue has. I had a half a mind to update the website to fill in GPG_TTY=$(tty) as suggested in this issue, but that only works in bash, and the current command line seems to work in tcsh too. Looks like we need a flow here to: (1) have users select their shell; and (2) to give you the right command to setenv given the shell. I guess alternatively we can always run bash -c 'lots of commands | other commands', but we'd need another level of quoting.

[josefigueroa-nedap]

It also works on OSX using zsh. Thanks!

[dmjio]

@dryvenn nice, works on nixos.

[dadiyang]

It works! Thank you so much!

[jamalkaksouri]

@dryvenn thank you, works on ubuntu subsystem.

zsh support

[teddybear]

Thank you!

[stevenchen3]

Kudos!!!! This saves me a lot of time. Appreciated.

[ghost]

Thank you so much!

I had this problem where I had my user.signingKey set to the correct value in Git on Ubuntu 18.04 after following this tutorial, but I was still unable to sign commits. Every time I tried, I got this error:

error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

This fixed that right up. Thanks again!

[iiykeazu]

The GOAT

[TruncatedDinoSour]

The GOAT

[TruncatedDinoSour]

the CAT

[FarmersWrap]

Thank you so much! Saved my ass.

[andremacdowell]

I really wasn't expecting that this would solve my problem, thanks!

[kowalks]

I think I've already gotten this error message like 12938901832 times before.

I keep debugging it for like 3 hours.

And always this issue post saves me.

You have saved our lives. We are eternally grateful.

[neeels]

This issue post has gained a meta level of helpfulness, an evergreen of uplift:
for years now, every now and then, we get heartwarming thank-you messages by surprise.
It's one of those small positive things that make my day.

Thanks everyone! <3

[rafay99-epic]

When trying to use the bash+curl verifying method on a server, this cryptic error message might happen:

gpg: signing failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Thank you so much...Life Saver

[EtherealEntity]

my saviour! :D

[Jacob-Stevens-Haas]

Suddenly, this doesn't seem to be working. I'm trying to get a copy of my GPG keys to my new laptop with:

ssh <user@server> gpg --export-secret-key <keyid> | gpg --import --batch

I've added the magic words to .profile, .bashrc, and .bash_profile in both user@server and locally, including restarting the terminal. Not sure what's going on.

[pransteter]

Man... you are absolutely an amazing savior. Awesome. Thank you so much!

[azharlihan]

Thanks @yveoch you save mee..

#2798 (comment)

[uratne]

Thanks @yveoch worked for me

[rizlas]

2024 and still kicking! Thank you ❤️

[romayengineer]

thank you very much!

[yankikucuk]

real superhero.

[space7panda]

For lazy zsh users:

echo 'export GPG_TTY=$(tty)' >> ~/.zshrc

[josenriagu]

on MacOS, make sure you also have a pinentry program installed (if you have specified a passphrase when setting up your gpg key). You can do so (using homebrew as example);

brew install pinentry-mac
then
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
and finally
killall gpg-agent

Restart your terminal and voila!

As seen on Github Docs: Telling Git about your signing key

[owans]

Worked for me. Thank you @josenriagu

[ismailarilik]

Just a thought: This shouldn't be an issue nor a bug since the need to expose GPG_TTY=$(tty) is documented here: https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/Invoking-GPG_002dAGENT.html

Of course, it can also be documented for keybase.

[FatDoge]

It works!😋

[Dude29]

Thank you for this! 🙏

[gscu]

THANK YOU

[red17electro]

on MacOS, make sure you also have a pinentry program installed (if you have specified a passphrase when setting up your gpg key). You can do so (using homebrew as example);

brew install pinentry-mac then echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf and finally killall gpg-agent

Restart your terminal and voila!

As seen on Github Docs: Telling Git about your signing key

Thanks, this worked for me 🙏🏻

[Asthriona]

When trying to use the bash+curl verifying method on a server, this cryptic error message might happen:

gpg: signing failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Since this is a fatal error and also quite difficult to debug, maybe the fix could be put somewhere (in the provided command line?):

export GPG_TTY=$(tty)

source

Much love! <3