On Fri, Feb 03 2017, Michael Biebl wrote: >> I'm quite happy about the listening sockets by default on desktop, but >> on servers it's exactly the opposite. And masking is currently > > What's the problem with having them started on servers? Those are UNIX > sockets, not something which is accessible remotely.
When gpg is used via command line, the agent is started automatically and then it's left sitting there. But for a system without seats, the agent doesn't make sense. It shouldn't be running. Over time, gpg even complains that "the agent is older than us", because the uptime of the server will outlast multiple gpg upgrades. I assume gpg will at some point just refuse to talk to the running agent? I wonder also if the socket is probed by other programs (?), as I've seen the agent started by users which are not using gpg by my accounts.