Alex, I've tried the suggestions below. I'm trying it first on Portable Thunderbird from http://osxportableapps.sourceforge.net/ because it is free. (The Portable Apple Mail has a required donation, which is an oxymoron.)
The embedded copy of Thunderbird has to be updated to a current 3.1 level before the Enigmail plug-in is detected and the OpenPGP menu item is enabled. This successful execution of Thunderbird must be done on a machine that does NOT have MacGPG2 already installed. We want to be able to have the USB drive as a self-contained package. I have the .gnupg folder at the root of the USB drive. I copied over the MacGPG2 folder and placed it at the root as well. The updated version of Thunderbird opens, and allows access to OpenPGP -> Preferences. There you must override the location of the gpg2 executable. Browsing to the path for the MacGPG2 folder is successful, but then the program hangs with the dreaded spinning beachball. The program must be 'force quit'. Re-executing Thunderbird shows the update of the path has been accepted, but then the program stalls again. After reading some other material (notably this http://www.swissunixsupport.com/mactips), I am suspecting that the issue is that pinentry-mac has not been started. I found where the application is in the MacGPG2 directory structure, but manually executing the pinentry-mac application has no effect. When the same USB drive version of Thunderbird is executed on a Mac that has MacGPG2 installed, the program executes flawlessly and can draw from the .gnupg key ring on the USB drive. Probably because pinentry-mac was executed at the time of the login. There is a script for Portable Thunderbird that could be edited in order to start pinentry-mac on launch. Further, that same script (if I am reading it properly) detects the first time executed and offers to copy the existing Thunderbird profile over to the Portable version. That same script could be further modified to detect if .gnupg is installed, and offer to copy it over as well as MacGPG2. I'm just not qualified to hack that script to make that happen. Am I on the right track that the pinentry-mac application needs to be executed prior to access of the .gnupg key ring via MacGPG2? Is there a way to do that so that standard UNIX ports are used instead of the other path variables that seem to be sent along? Must pinentry-mac be executed at log in or can it be executed prior to starting an application that wants to use .gnupg and MacGPG2? Thank you in advance for your help. Cracking this nut would be very helpful to the Mac community. Perhaps even consideration could be given to allowing the gpgtools installer to install the necessary items onto a USB drive instead of just a drive where there is OS X. I appreciate your indulgence to an old MacHead. Best Regards, Frederick - Security Services Executive > Dear Frederick, > > On 02.05.2011, at 17:51, SecureLaptop.org Information wrote: > > Just sent an unencrypted version. The web site indicated to use the PGP key > > for gpgtools.org when sending a message. Sorry about that! > > just updated the web site to avoid confusion, thanks. > > > How would you suggest installing the GPGtools onto a USB drive? Is this > > even possible with the current implementation of MacGPG2? > > Let me give it a thought: > > 0. Possible issue for all applications: the location of ".gnupg" is usually > at $HOME. > 1. MacGPG2: Starting with 2.0.17 all related files are located at > /usr/local/MacGPG2. So moving this directory to the USB drive would be a good > starting point. Benjamin (CC) is the best contact person. > 2. GPGMail: Usually Mail.app looks for plugins at /Library/Mail/Bundles and > $HOME/Library/Mail/Bundles. Not sure how to fix that. > 3. GPG Keychain Access: Might work out of the box. Roman (CC) is the best > contact person. > 4. GPGServices: Might work out of the box after restarting the Services > daemon. Moritz (CC) is the best contact person. > > > We were pleased to make a donation to the project in February and hope to > > be able to volunteer to assist with Spanish translation services soon. > > Your help is very welcome. > > Best regards, Alex > > On 02.05.2011, at 17:49, SecureLaptop.org Information wrote: > > > Dear GPGtools: > > > > Thank you for an excellent product! On a web site that I contribute too, > > securelaptop.org, your product is featured as the solution to e-mail > > encryption on the Mac. We have helped several of our readers that are Mac > > users to use encrypted e-mail using your tool and installer. Excellent work! > > > > One of my goals is to make a portable version of Apple Mail and/or > > Thunderbird that has MacGPG pre-installed so that all the user needs to do > > is change a few configuration items on the e-mail client, plus add their > > PGP keys. They would then be able to take the USB drive to any compatible > > Mac and be able to send/receive encrypted e-mails. > > > > We have been successful at doing this same thing with a portable version of > > Thunderbird for Windows. Yet we are having difficulty in doing the same for > > the Mac. > > > > How would you suggest installing the GPGtools onto a USB drive? Is this > > even possible with the current implementation of MacGPG2? > > > > Thank you in advance for your assistance. We were pleased to make a > > donation to the project in February and hope to be able to volunteer to > > assist with Spanish translation services soon. > > > > Best Regards, > > > > Frederick - Security Services Executive >
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