gpa
This is our
tomboy note on gpa provided 'as is'
and published at
http://www.cgsa.net/tomboy/gpa.html
and at
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=608675&highlight=gpa
nov. 11 2007 by
http://www.meurrens.org
updated nov. 11 2007 at 21:16 GMT+1
updated nov. 12 2007 at 12:49 GMT+1
It is the synthesis of a discussion on the list Gpa-dev mailing list in november 2007:
Gpa-dev@gnupg.org
http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gpa-dev
and of discussions on
http://.org/
Frontends for GNUPG
http://www.gnupg.org/(fr)/related_software/frontends.html
- We use the enigmail extension for the mail client Thunderbird.
4 stand alone applications are distributed with Ubuntu :
- KGpg , a GNUPG front end for KDE, well integrated with Konqueror
- Seahorse , a Gnome frontend for GNUPG that integrates with nautilus (you may encrypt, decrypt or sign a file by a right click on the file name) http://www.gnome.org/projects/seahorse/ We use the version 2.20 provided with Ubuntu. In november 2007, the last stable is 2.20.1
- GPA (Gnu Privacy Assistant) is a graphical user interface for the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG). It integrates a file manager convenient to manage your crypted files, signatures, etc. The obsolete and buggy version 0.7.0 comes with Ubuntu. We use version 0.7.6 (last stable in november 2007). This very note tells why and how.
GNU Privacy Assistant (gpa) , a frontend to GNUPG
http://www.gnupg.org/(fr)/related_software/gpa/index.html
Buggy version of gpa delivered with Ubuntu
The last version of GNU/Linux Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy, The Gutsy Gibbon, october 2007)
still comes with gpa 0.7.0. (which is 4 years old!)
We know there is bug in this version : gpa freezes when trying
to encrypt to several keys. This bug was fixed in version 0.7.5 of 2007-02-26
This is a severe bug as we often need to encrypt to several keys (generaly the key of a colleague and our own key)
On
http://www.gnupg.org/ in the french version, the page
http://www.gnupg.org/(fr)/related_software/gpa/index.html
is partially obsolete as it suggests the download from
ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/alpha/gpa
of a so-called last gpa source beeing 0.7.5 of 2007-02-26
However, the english version
http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/related_software/gpa/index.html
properly recommands the development site
http://wald.intevation.org/projects/gpa/
where the source of version 0.7.6 is effectively available.
Installation of gpa on Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy )
Download gpa-0.7.6.tar.bz2 from
http://wald.intevation.org/projects/gpa/
Unpack in a directory gpa-0.7.6 (supposed to be on your Desktop in our example)
An install file explains how to configure, compile and install
gpa but, of course, does not provide specific explanations
(which dependencies ?) for Ubuntu. Here they are.
Dependencies
To compile the gpa source on Ubuntu (Desktop edition)
some installations must first be done thru the synaptic tool
(in the System/Administration menu) or by a few
$ apt-get install
The following packages are needed (their dependencies will be loaded automatically)
As for most of the compiles, you need :
- the make utility (probably already installed)
- the compilers gcc (probably already installed) and g++
- the library libc6-dev (otherwise you get the famous "C compiler cannot create executables" message)
Regarding more specifically gpa, you need :
- zlib1g-dev (zlib library used by gpa)
- libgtk2.0-dev (GTK+ used by gpa)
- libgpgme11-dev (GPGME used by gpa)
- and, of course, gnupg (already installed if you installed gpa 0.7.0 and/or thunderbird-enigmail)
If you fail to install these packages, the "./configure" will provide error messages.
It's however more confortable to install the dependencies listed here before trying the "./configure".
You can install all these dependencies (and their own dependencies) in one step by :
$ sudo apt-get install make gcc g++ libc6-dev zlib1g-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgpgme11-dev gnupg
or, using the easy way :
$ sudo apt-get build-dep gpa
Configure, compile, install
By default, gpa (0.7.6) installs it self in
/usr/local/bin/gpa while the initial application (0.7.0) installed by Ubuntu was in
/usr/bin/gpa . So, in this case, don't forget to update the path of the application in the definition of the main menu (System/Preferences)
To simply replace the program in
/usr/bin , use the
--prefix=/usr option as shown below.
Finally, the compilation, install and test of gpa 0.7.6 is relatively simple.
Supposing gpa-0.7.6 is the directory where you unpacked gpa,
the following steps will probably do :
$ sudo apt-get build-dep gpa
$ cd gpa-0.7.6
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo make install
Btw, the good news is that the bug related to the encryption to several keys is effectively fixed in version 0.7.6
Here is a different suggestion by Marcus :
$ apt-get install dpkg-dev
$ apt-get source gpa
$ tar xjf gpa-0.7.6.tar.bz2
$ cp -r gpa-0.7.0/debian gpa-0.7.6
$ cd gpa-0.7.6
$ emacs debian/changelog # Optional, see below for an example entry
$ dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc -rfakeroot # Or -rsudo
$ dpkg -i ../gpa_0.7.6-0.0.deb
Example entry for debian/changelog (the version 0.0 makes sure that
official packages will replace this one).
gpa (0.7.6-0.0) feisty; urgency=low
* Local update to 0.7.6.
-- Your Name <your_user@localhost> Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:16:00 +0200
Installation of gpa on Ubuntu 7.04 (feisty)
Regarding Ubuntu 7.04 (feisty, The Feisty Fawn, the previous version of Ubuntu),
the installation of gpa is a little bit more complicate than on Ubuntu 7.10
The reason is that gpa 0.7.6 (as well as gpa 0.7.5) relies on version 1.1.5 of gpgme,
while only the version 1.1.2 of gpgme is provided with Ubuntu 7.04.
(Ubuntu 7.10 already comes with version 1.1.5)
So you first need to install a recent version of gpgme (GPGME "Gnupg made easy")
http://www.gnupg.org/related_software/gpgme/
Furthermore, to install gpgme 1.1.5 , you need to previously install gpgsm.
http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/documentation/manuals/gnupg/GPGSM-Protocol.html
Finally, here are the steps needed to install gpa 0.7.6 on Ubuntu 7.04
Step by step :
Download gpa-0.7.6.tar.bz2 from
http://wald.intevation.org/projects/gpa/
Unpack in a directory gpa-0.7.6 (supposed to be on your Desktop in our example)
Download gpgme-1.1.5.tar.gz from
ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/
Unpack in a directory gpgme-1.1.5
$ sudo apt-get build-dep gpa
$ sudo apt-get install gpgsm
$ cd Desktop/gpgme-1.1.5
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ../gpa-0.7.6
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo make install
The gpa entry will appear in your main menu (under "accessories"); the program is at
/usr/bin/gpa
Remark
The 2 first apt-get entries can eventually be replaced by the explicit :
$ sudo apt-get install make gcc g++ libc6-dev zlib1g-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgpgme11-dev gnupg gpgsm
but be carefull for typo's...
See above section on Ubuntu 7.10 to read more about each of these dependencies.
I have been asked why I haved installed both seahorse and gpa.
the comparison between the 2 softwares is in my
tomboy note
gpa-v-seahorse
on line at URL
http://www.cgsa.net/tomboy/gpa-v-seahorse.html
Misc links
http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/gnupg