#524 Passphrass always required

[Allen]

Enimail is always requiring me to enter my passphrase, even when I am
not signing or encrypting an email. If I do not enter the passphrass the text
of the message I want to save as a draft is discarded.
This is a major defect for me.

[Ludwig Hügelschäfer]

What is your setting for the passphrase timeout (Enigmail -> Preferences, Basic Tab, "Remember passphrase for 'x' minutes of idle time")?

[Allen]

It said something about not being able to use the timeout setting.
I have since removed the Enigma addon for Thunderbird on Linux.

  From: Ludwig Hügelschäfer <huegelschaefer@users.sf.net>

To: [enigmail:bugs] 524@bugs.enigmail.p.re.sf.net
Sent: Monday, October 5, 2015 3:28 PM
Subject: [enigmail:bugs] #524 Passphrass always required

What is your setting for the passphrase timeout (Enigmail -> Preferences, Basic Tab, "Remember passphrase for 'x' minutes of idle time")?

[bugs:#524] Passphrass always requiredStatus: open
Created: Tue Sep 22, 2015 03:06 PM UTC by Allen
Last Updated: Tue Sep 22, 2015 03:06 PM UTC
Owner: nobodyEnimail is always requiring me to enter my passphrase, even when I am
not signing or encrypting an email. If I do not enter the passphrass the text
of the message I want to save as a draft is discarded.
This is a major defect for me.Sent from sourceforge.net because you indicated interest in https://sourceforge.net/p/enigmail/bugs/524/To unsubscribe from further messages, please visit https://sourceforge.net/auth/subscriptions/

[Allen]

I stopped using Enigmail it part because I did not know how to give meaningful feedback.

  From: Patrick Brunschwig <pbrunschwig@users.sf.net>

To: [enigmail:bugs] 524@bugs.enigmail.p.re.sf.net
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2015 4:09 AM
Subject: [enigmail:bugs] #524 Passphrass always required

• status: open --> wont-fix
• Comment:
  No useful feedback from reporter [bugs:#524] Passphrass always requiredStatus: wont-fix
  Created: Tue Sep 22, 2015 03:06 PM UTC by Allen
  Last Updated: Mon Oct 05, 2015 08:28 PM UTC
  Owner: nobodyEnimail is always requiring me to enter my passphrase, even when I am
  not signing or encrypting an email. If I do not enter the passphrass the text
  of the message I want to save as a draft is discarded.
  This is a major defect for me.Sent from sourceforge.net because you indicated interest in https://sourceforge.net/p/enigmail/bugs/524/To unsubscribe from further messages, please visit https://sourceforge.net/auth/subscriptions/

[Patrick Brunschwig]

No useful feedback from reporter

[Rimas Kudelis]

I find this bug very annoying too.
I sometimes write e-mails slowly and for a long time, and sometimes, even though these e-mails aren't marked as signed or encrypted, I start getting the passphrase popup.
What's even more annoying is that the popup seemingly cannot be dismissed: if I click on Cancel, it just reappears within seconds. Then after being dismissed for several times, I think it just stops reappearing until later. This turns writing e-mails into quite an unpleasant and hardly predictable experience.

[Ludwig Hügelschäfer]

What is your setting for the passphrase timeout (Enigmail -> Preferences, Basic Tab, "Remember passphrase for 'x' minutes of idle time")?

Which versions of Enigmail and GnuPG do you use?

[Rimas Kudelis]

10 minutes
Enigmail 1.9.6 (20161105-1010)
gpg (GnuPG) 2.0.28 (Gpg4win 2.2.5)

By the way, if you need the GnuPG version, it would make sense to report it somewhere in Enigmail about dialog instead of just reporting its location. :)

[Ludwig Hügelschäfer]

What happens, if you set your autosave period less than the passphrase timeout? (Thunderbird preferences -> Composition tab -> General -> Autosave every x minute, where x should be less than 10.

Thanks for the hint for displaying the GnuPG version in the dislog :-)

[Rimas Kudelis]

It's been set at 5 minutes all along.
Interestingly, I just closed an e-mail I was composing, and it seems to have been saved to Drafts before I entered my GPG passphrase, and yet the dialog asking for it popped up. What's the point in that? Was it saved unencrypted first and then subsequently encrypted after I entered the passphrase?

[Patrick Brunschwig]

The password is not required for encryption, but for decryption only. Could it be that the saved draft was immediately viewed after it was saved (e.g. because you opened the Drafts folder)? In that case the password is required for decryption.

[Rimas Kudelis]

Right now, I'm composing an email in one window, and have an email in my inbox open in another (along with chat, calendar and another email in their own tabs). None of open emails are encrypted or signed.

And this frickin' passphrase dialog keeps popping up and interrupting me. And it even manages to pop up above the browser window I'm typing this message in. I'm ready to give you whatever information you need, please ask, but please fix this. Otherwise I'll just have to disable Enigmail altogether. And this is not a threat, it's a cry for help.

[Rimas Kudelis]

Ahh, I think this actually is related to what you said about passphrase being required for decoding. I think that bit has an undesired side effect: if you have even a tiny smilie image in the email you're composing, and that email gets saved as an encrypted draft, you get a second pop-up asking for the passphrase to decrypt that email just because that smilie image is now part of that encoded email. And if you click cancel, the passphrase pops up again. And again. And again. You know where I'm going with this.

[Rimas Kudelis]

Actually, even after entering the passphrase the draft cannot be saved with that image for some reason.

[Rimas Kudelis]

@Patrick, can you confirm any of this?

[Patrick Brunschwig]

I can't reproduce this.