Package: pinentry-gtk2 Version: 1.0.0-1 Followup-For: Bug #848999 I can confirm that behaviour, the pinentry-gtk2 window only flashes up shortly and then closes, but pinenetry-ncurses and -gnome3 work fine. The last time it worked for me was on Jan 1st 2017 with Enigmail. It also doesn't work for me after a reboot, and I haven't changed anything related to my setup since then (if you want to see, have a look at https://github.com/rohieb/dotfiles/tree/r2d2 ;-))
Here's a session transcript: $ sudo login r2d2 login: rohieb Password: $ echo $GPG_TTY /dev/pts/7 $ tty /dev/pts/7 $ gpgconf --kill gpg-agent $ ps -Af|grep gpg-agent rohieb 23122 21990 0 02:43 pts/7 00:00:00 grep --color=auto gpg-agent $ echo foobar | gpg --sign (at this point, pinentry-ncurses window pops up normally, but choosing "Cancel") gpg: using "DD2C3FEA" as default secret key for signing gpg: signing failed: Operation cancelled £ÀËÌÀŸÉÑ&í®ý+ÆӼI 3Óòó¸gpg: signing failed: Operation cancelled $ $ export DISPLAY=:0 XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority $ echo foobar | gpg --sign (pinentry-gtk2 window flashes up, closes directly) gpg: using "DD2C3FEA" as default secret key for signing gpg: signing failed: Operation cancelled £ÀËÌÀŸÉÑ&í®ý+ÆӼI 3¥åç'%qgpg: signing failed: Operation cancelled $ But maybe this is of interest, also with short window flashing as before: $ echo GETPIN | pinentry-gtk-2 OK Pleased to meet you ** (pinentry-gtk-2:30108): CRITICAL **: could not grab keyboard: not viewable (3) ** (pinentry-gtk-2:30108): WARNING **: it took 4097 tries to grab the keyboard ** (pinentry-gtk-2:30108): WARNING **: it took 1795 tries to grab the pointer ERR 83886179 Operation cancelled <Pinentry> $ However, my usual workaround for those keyboard grabbing errors (changing to a tty, then changing back to X) did not solve that issue. Neither did export GTK_IM_MODULE="", or killing ibus-daemon, to maybe work around ibus issues. - Roland -- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers testing-debug APT policy: (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'testing'), (170, 'unstable'), (1, 'unstable-debug'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 4.8.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages pinentry-gtk2 depends on: ii libassuan0 2.4.3-2 ii libc6 2.24-8 ii libglib2.0-0 2.50.2-2 ii libgpg-error0 1.25-2 ii libgtk2.0-0 2.24.31-1 ii libncursesw5 6.0+20161126-1 ii libsecret-1-0 0.18.5-2 ii libtinfo5 6.0+20161126-1 pinentry-gtk2 recommends no packages. Versions of packages pinentry-gtk2 suggests: ii pinentry-doc 1.0.0-1 -- no debconf information