EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual

EasyPG Assistant is an Emacs user interface to GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG, see Top in Using the GNU Privacy Guard).

EasyPG Assistant is a part of the package called EasyPG, an all-in-one GnuPG interface for Emacs. EasyPG also contains the library interface called EasyPG Library.

This file describes EasyPG Assistant 1.0.0.

Copyright © 2007–2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual,” and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.

(a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual.”

Table of Contents


1 Overview

EasyPG Assistant is an Emacs frontend application to GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard) that provides the following features:


2 Quick Start

You can use EasyPG Assistant without any Emacs or GnuPG configuration whatsoever, for example to encrypt and decrypt files automatically with symmetric encryption, see Encrypting and Decrypting gpg Files. However, to use the full set of EasyPG Assistant’s functions you should have at least some minimum GnuPG configuration in place.

John Michael Ashley’s GNU Privacy Handbook, available online as part of the GnuPG user guides, provides an introduction to GnuPG use and configuration. In contrast to that, the GnuPG manual (see Top in Using the GNU Privacy Guard) is more of a reference manual.

EasyPG Assistant commands are prefixed by ‘epa-’. For example,

EasyPG Assistant provides several cryptographic features which can be integrated into other Emacs functionalities. For example, automatic encryption/decryption of *.gpg files.


3 Commands

This chapter introduces various commands for typical use cases.


3.1 Key Management

Probably the first step of using EasyPG Assistant is to browse your keyring. M-x epa-list-keys is corresponding to ‘gpg --list-keys’ from the command line.

Command: epa-list-keys name mode

Show all keys matched with name from the public keyring.

The output looks as follows.

  u A5B6B2D4B15813FE Daiki Ueno <ueno@unixuser.org>

A character on the leftmost column indicates the trust level of the key. If it is ‘u’, the key is marked as ultimately trusted. The second column is the key ID, and the rest is the user ID.

You can move over entries by TAB. If you type RET or click button1 on an entry, you will see more detailed information about the key you selected.

 u Daiki Ueno <ueno@unixuser.org>
 u A5B6B2D4B15813FE 1024bits DSA
        Created: 2001-10-09
        Expires: 2007-09-04
        Capabilities: sign certify
        Fingerprint: 8003 7CD0 0F1A 9400 03CA  50AA A5B6 B2D4 B158 13FE
 u 4447461B2A9BEA2D 2048bits ELGAMAL_E
        Created: 2001-10-09
        Expires: 2007-09-04
        Capabilities: encrypt
        Fingerprint: 9003 D76B 73B7 4A8A E588  10AF 4447 461B 2A9B EA2D

To browse your private keyring, use M-x epa-list-secret-keys.

Command: epa-list-secret-keys name

Show all keys matched with name from the private keyring.

In *Keys* buffer, several commands are available. The common use case is to export some keys to a file. To do that, type m to select keys, type o, and then supply the filename.

Below are other commands related to key management. Some of them take a file as input/output, and others take the current region.

Command: epa-insert-keys keys

Insert selected keys after the point. It will let you select keys before insertion. By default, it will encode keys in the OpenPGP armor format.

Command: epa-import-keys file

Import keys from file to your keyring.

Command: epa-import-keys-region start end

Import keys from the current region between start and end to your keyring.

Command: epa-import-armor-in-region start end

Import keys in the OpenPGP armor format in the current region between start and end. The difference from epa-import-keys-region is that epa-import-armor-in-region searches armors in the region and applies epa-import-keys-region to each of them.

Command: epa-delete-keys allow-secret

Delete selected keys. If allow-secret is non-nil, it also delete the secret keys.


3.2 Cryptographic Operations on Regions

Command: epa-decrypt-region start end

Decrypt the current region between start and end. It replaces the region with the decrypted text.

Command: epa-decrypt-armor-in-region start end

Decrypt OpenPGP armors in the current region between start and end. The difference from epa-decrypt-region is that epa-decrypt-armor-in-region searches armors in the region and applies epa-decrypt-region to each of them. That is, this command does not alter the original text around armors.

Command: epa-verify-region start end

Verify the current region between start and end. It sends the verification result to the minibuffer or a popup window. It replaces the region with the signed text.

Command: epa-verify-cleartext-in-region

Verify OpenPGP cleartext blocks in the current region between start and end. The difference from epa-verify-region is that epa-verify-cleartext-in-region searches OpenPGP cleartext blocks in the region and applies epa-verify-region to each of them. That is, this command does not alter the original text around OpenPGP cleartext blocks.

Command: epa-sign-region start end signers type

Sign the current region between start and end. By default, it creates a cleartext signature. If a prefix argument is given, it will let you select signing keys, and then a signature type.

Command: epa-encrypt-region start end recipients sign signers

Encrypt the current region between start and end. It will let you select recipients. If a prefix argument is given, it will also ask you whether or not to sign the text before encryption and if you answered yes, it will let you select the signing keys.


3.3 Cryptographic Operations on Files

Command: epa-decrypt-file file &optional output

Decrypt file. If you do not specify the name output to use for the decrypted file, this function prompts for the value to use.

Command: epa-verify-file file

Verify file.

Command: epa-sign-file file signers type

Sign file. If a prefix argument is given, it will let you select signing keys, and then a signature type.

Command: epa-encrypt-file file recipients

Encrypt file. It will let you select recipients.


3.4 Dired Integration

EasyPG Assistant extends Dired Mode for GNU Emacs to allow users to easily do cryptographic operations on files. For example,

M-x dired
(mark some files)
: e (or M-x epa-dired-do-encrypt)
(select recipients by 'm' and click [OK])

The following keys are assigned.

: d

Decrypt marked files.

: v

Verify marked files.

: s

Sign marked files.

: e

Encrypt marked files.


3.5 Mail-Mode Integration

EasyPG Assistant provides a minor mode epa-mail-mode to help user compose inline OpenPGP messages. Inline OpenPGP is a traditional style of sending signed/encrypted emails by embedding raw OpenPGP blobs inside a message body, not using modern MIME format.

NOTE: Inline OpenPGP is not recommended and you should consider to use PGP/MIME. See Inline OpenPGP in E-mail is bad, Mm’kay?.

Once epa-mail-mode is enabled, the following keys are assigned. You can do it by C-u 1 M-x epa-mail-mode or through the Customize interface. Try M-x customize-variable epa-global-mail-mode.

C-c C-e C-d and C-c C-e d

Decrypt OpenPGP armors in the current buffer.

C-c C-e C-v and C-c C-e v

Verify OpenPGP cleartext signed messages in the current buffer.

C-c C-e C-s and C-c C-e s

Compose a signed message from the current buffer, using your default key. With a prefix argument, select the key to use interactively.

C-c C-e C-e and C-c C-e e

Compose an encrypted message from the current buffer. By default it tries to build the recipient list from ‘to’, ‘cc’, and ‘bcc’ fields of the mail header. To include your key in the recipient list, use ‘encrypt-to’ option in ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf. This function translates recipient addresses using the epa-mail-aliases list. You can also use that option to ignore specific recipients for encryption purposes.

With prefix argument, asks you to select the recipients interactively, whether to sign, and which key(s) to sign with.


3.6 Encrypting and Decrypting gpg Files

By default, every file whose name ends with .gpg will be treated as encrypted. That is, when you open such a file, the decrypted text is inserted in the buffer rather than encrypted one. Similarly, when you save the buffer to a foo.gpg file, encrypted data is written.

When you save a buffer to an encrypted file for the first time, EasyPG Assistant presents you a list of keys in a buffer *Keys* where you can select recipients for encryption. See Key Management, for a description of the format of that buffer. You can streamline this recipient selection step by customizing variables epa-file-encrypt-to and epa-file-select-keys described further below in this section.

If you do not select any recipient during this step, EasyPG Assistant uses symmetric encryption. As a consequence, you have to enter the passphrase twice for every buffer save and every so often for file reads, since the GnuPG Agent caches your passphrase for file reads at least for some time, but not for buffer saves. See Caching Passphrases, for more information.

If you have created your own keypair1, you can select that as recipient, and EasyPG Assistant will use public key encryption for that file. Since GnuPG performs encryption with your public key, it does not prompt for a passphrase for the buffer save, but it will prompt for your passphrase for file reads every now and then, depending on the GnuPG Agent cache configuration.

To encrypt and decrypt files as described above EasyPG Assistant under certain circumstances uses intermediate temporary files that contain the plain-text contents of the files it processes. EasyPG Assistant creates them below the directory returned by function temporary-file-directory (see Generating Unique File Names in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). If you want to be sure not to leave any plain-text traces, use an encrypted file systems at least for that directory.

The file name pattern for encrypted files can be controlled by epa-file-name-regexp.

Variable: epa-file-name-regexp

Regexp which matches filenames treated as encrypted.

You can disable this behavior with M-x epa-file-disable, and then get it back with M-x epa-file-enable.

Command: epa-file-disable

Disable automatic encryption/decryption of *.gpg files.

Command: epa-file-enable

Enable automatic encryption/decryption of *.gpg files.

By default, epa-file will try to use symmetric encryption, aka password-based encryption. If you want to use public key encryption instead, do M-x epa-file-select-keys, which pops up the key selection dialog.

Command: epa-file-select-keys

Select recipient keys to encrypt the currently visiting file with public key encryption.

You can also change the default behavior with the variable epa-file-select-keys.

Variable: epa-file-select-keys

Control whether or not to pop up the key selection dialog.

For frequently visited files, it might be a good idea to tell Emacs which encryption method should be used through file variables (see Local Variables in Files in The Emacs Editor). Use the epa-file-encrypt-to local variable for this.

For example, if you want an Elisp file to be encrypted with a public key associated with an email address ‘ueno@unixuser.org’, add the following line to the beginning of the file.

;; -*- epa-file-encrypt-to: ("ueno@unixuser.org") -*-

Instead, if you want the file always (regardless of the value of the epa-file-select-keys variable) encrypted with symmetric encryption, change the line as follows.

;; -*- epa-file-encrypt-to: nil -*-

Other variables which control the automatic encryption/decryption behavior are below.

Variable: epa-file-cache-passphrase-for-symmetric-encryption

If non-nil, cache passphrase for symmetric encryption. The default value is nil.

For security reasons, this option is turned off by default and not recommended to be used. Instead, consider using the GnuPG Agent, which in many cases can do the same job, and does it in a safer way. See Caching Passphrases, for more information.

Variable: epa-file-inhibit-auto-save

If non-nil, disable auto-saving when opening an encrypted file. The default value is t.


3.7 Querying a Key Server

The epa-search-keys command can be used to query a GPG key server. Emacs will then pop up a buffer that lists the matches, and you can then fetch (and add) keys to your personal key ring.

In the key search buffer, you can use the f command to mark keys for fetching, and then x to fetch the keys (and incorporate them into your key ring).

The epa-keyserver variable says which server to query.


4 GnuPG Version Compatibility

As of June 2023, there are three active branches of GnuPG: 2.4, 2.2, and 1.4. GnuPG versions 2.4.1 and later suffer from GnuPG bug T6481 and are hardly usable with Emacs. There is a patch for that bug available at least for GnuPG version 2.4.1, which your operating system or distribution might provide already. GnuPG 1.4 is considered a legacy version.

Besides that, all of those branches mentioned above should work flawlessly with Emacs with basic use-cases. They have, however, some incompatible characteristics, which might be visible when used from Emacs.


5 GnuPG Pinentry

An important component of the GnuPG suite is the Pinentry, which allows for secure entry of passphrases requested by GnuPG. GnuPG delivers various different programs as Pinentry, ranging from bland TTY-only pinentry-tty to fancy graphical dialogs for various desktop environments, like pinentry-gnome3. Your operating system usually determines which of these is used by default.

Note that the selection of a concrete Pinentry program determines only how GnuPG queries for passphrases and not how often. For the latter question see Caching Passphrases.

With some configuration Emacs can also play the role of a Pinentry. The most natural choice, available with GnuPG 2.1.5 and later, is to use Emacs itself as Pinentry for requests that are triggered by Emacs. For example, if you open a file whose name ends with .gpg using automatic decryption, you most likely also want to enter the passphrase for that request in Emacs.

This so called loopback Pinentry has the added benefit that it works also when you use Emacs remotely or from a text-only terminal. To enable it:

  1. Ensure that option allow-loopback-pinentry is configured for gpg-agent, which should be the default. See Option Summary in Using the GNU Privacy Guard.
  2. Customize variable epg-pinentry-mode to loopback in Emacs.

There are other options available to use Emacs as Pinentry, you might come across a Pinentry called pinentry-emacs or gpg-agent option allow-emacs-pinentry. However, these are considered insecure or semi-obsolete and might not be supported by your operating system or distribution. For example, Debian GNU/Linux supports only the loopback Pinentry described above.


6 Caching Passphrases

Typing passphrases is a troublesome task if you frequently open and close the same file. GnuPG and EasyPG Assistant provide mechanisms to remember your passphrases for a limited time. Using these, you only need to re-enter the passphrase occasionally. However, the configuration is a bit confusing since it depends on your GnuPG installation (see GnuPG Version Compatibility), encryption method (symmetric or public key), and whether or not you want to use GnuPG Agent. As an additional constraint, use of the GnuPG Agent is mandatory for GnuPG 2.0 and later. Here are some questions:

  1. Do you use GnuPG version 2.0 or later instead of GnuPG version 1.4?
  2. Do you use symmetric encryption rather than public key encryption?
  3. Do you want to use GnuPG Agent?

Here are configurations depending on your answers:

123Configuration
YesYesMustSet up GnuPG Agent.
YesNoMustSet up GnuPG Agent.
NoYesYesSet up elisp passphrase cache.
NoYesNoSet up elisp passphrase cache.
NoNoYesSet up GnuPG Agent.
NoNoNoYou can’t, without GnuPG Agent.

To set up GnuPG Agent, follow the instruction in Invoking GPG-AGENT in Using the GNU Privacy Guard.

To set up elisp passphrase cache, set epa-file-cache-passphrase-for-symmetric-encryption. See Encrypting and Decrypting gpg Files.


7 Bug Reports

Bugs and problems with EasyPG Assistant are actively worked on by the Emacs development team. Feature requests and suggestions are also more than welcome. Use M-x report-emacs-bug, see Reporting Bugs in The Emacs Editor.

When submitting a bug report, please try to describe in excruciating detail the steps required to reproduce the problem. Also try to collect necessary information to fix the bug, such as:

Before reporting the bug, you should set epg-debug in the ~/.emacs file and repeat the bug. Then, include the contents of the *epg-debug* buffer. Note that the first letter of the buffer name is a whitespace.


Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.3, 3 November 2008
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
https://fsf.org/

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
  1. PREAMBLE

    The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.

    This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.

    We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.

  2. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

    This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The “Document”, below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as “you”. You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law.

    A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.

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  3. VERBATIM COPYING

    You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.

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  4. COPYING IN QUANTITY

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  5. MODIFICATIONS

    You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

    1. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
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    5. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.
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    10. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the “History” section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.
    11. For any section Entitled “Acknowledgements” or “Dedications”, Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.
    12. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.
    13. Delete any section Entitled “Endorsements”. Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.
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    15. Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.

    If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version’s license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.

    You may add a section Entitled “Endorsements”, provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties—for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.

    You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.

    The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.

  6. COMBINING DOCUMENTS

    You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.

    The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.

    In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise combine any sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled “Dedications”. You must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”

  7. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

    You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.

    You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.

  8. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

    A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.

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  9. TRANSLATION

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Concept Index

Jump to:   A   B   C   D   E   F   G   I   K   L   M   P   Q   R   S   T   V  
Index Entry  Section

A
automatic file encryption and decryption: Encrypting/decrypting gpg files

B
browse key ring: Key management
bug reports: Bug Reports

C
caching passphrases: Caching Passphrases
compatibility with gnupg: GnuPG version compatibility
configuration of gnupg: Quick start
cryptographic operations on files: Cryptographic operations on files
cryptographic operations on regions: Cryptographic operations on regions

D
decrypt file: Cryptographic operations on files
decrypt region: Cryptographic operations on regions
decrypting gpg files: Encrypting/decrypting gpg files
delete keys: Key management
directory operations: Dired integration
dired integration: Dired integration
documentation on gnupg: Quick start

E
easypg assistant: Top
encrypt file: Cryptographic operations on files
encrypt region: Cryptographic operations on regions
encrypting gpg files: Encrypting/decrypting gpg files
entering passphrases: Caching Passphrases

F
features of easypg assistant: Overview
file operations, cryptographic: Cryptographic operations on files

G
gnu privacy guard: Top
gnupg: Top
gnupg documentation: Quick start
gnupg pinentry: GnuPG Pinentry
gnupg version compatibility: GnuPG version compatibility
gpg files, encrypting and decrypting: Encrypting/decrypting gpg files

I
import keys: Key management
insert keys: Key management
introduction to easypg assistant: Quick start
introduction to gnupg: Quick start

K
key management: Key management
key ring, browsing: Key management
key server, querying: Querying a key server

L
loopback pinentry: GnuPG Pinentry

M
mail-mode integration: Mail-mode integration
multiple file operations: Dired integration

P
passphrases, entering and caching: Caching Passphrases
pinentry provided by gnupg: GnuPG Pinentry
pinentry, emacs as: GnuPG Pinentry
private key ring, browsing: Key management
public key encryption, passphrase entry for: Encrypting/decrypting gpg files

Q
query key server: Querying a key server

R
region operations, cryptographic: Cryptographic operations on regions
reporting bugs: Bug Reports

S
sending signed/encrypted mails: Mail-mode integration
sign file: Cryptographic operations on files
sign region: Cryptographic operations on regions
symmetric encryption, passphrase entry for: Encrypting/decrypting gpg files

T
temporary files created by easypg assistant: Encrypting/decrypting gpg files

V
verify file: Cryptographic operations on files
verify region: Cryptographic operations on regions
version compatibility with gnupg: GnuPG version compatibility


Key Index


Function Index


Variable Index


Footnotes

(1)

For encryption and decryption of files you do not intend to share, you do not have to use an email address as recipient during creation of the keypair. You can also use some free-form string that gives information on the use of the keypair, like backup or account database.