Can I use Enigmail and Virtual Identitiy add-ons together?

[John Lane]

Hello, I am just getting up to speed with gpg and enigmail in particular, so please bear with me. I cannot send signed/encrypted mail if I have the "Virtual Identity" add-on enabled. If it's disabled then it works fine.

Can these be used together?

I have done some searching and found some mentions of problems in the past with answers giving solutions or saying it doesn't work. They're all from some time ago so I'd like to understand the current situation. Here are links to those mentions:

https://www.enigmail.net/list_archive/2010-March/012101.html
https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id/ticket/300
https://www.enigmail.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=240

My use-case for Virtual Identity is similar to the first of those, where I have a wildcard domain with a large number of identities that sends as for different recipients.

The problem that I see is that I get the "Enigmail Confirm" dialogue stating "You did not configure this identity for using Enigmail security. Send unencrypted message?" when I try to either send or save as a draft.

I have tried creating a test key without an email address but it didn't help.

Versions: Thunderbird 31.1.2; Enigmail 1.7.2; Virtual Identity 0.9.21; ArchLinux 3.16.4 x86_85

Advice appreciated.

[Ludwig Hügelschäfer]

You have to configure all your identities to use the same key without associated email address.

[daniel hahler]

Can you elaborate on this, please?

What do you mean with "without associated email address"?

I am seeing the same (very annoying issue).

It seems like when configuring the identity from the dialog (or from the icon in the lower right of the compose window), a (duplicated) Thunderbird identity is being created (with the same account name, but a different email address). This happened at least twice now.

My main Thunderbird identities are configured to use the same key.
I am using "Convenient encryption settings".

I am now trying to disable the "Encrypt drafts" option, which hopefully makes it better (as a workaround).

Are you using the "Virtual Identity" addon yourself?

btw: the message "You did not configure this identity for using Enigmail security. Send unencrypted message?" is misleading when it pops up while saving a draft. It would be nice if it could be changed in this case, because at first I was afraid that the email would be send after pressing Ok.

[daniel hahler]

I am just seeing this issue:

Using Virtual Identify I am using a new identity / email.

When I try to send the mail, Enigmail complains that the identity is not yet configured, and asks me if I want to send it unencrypted.

But I had configured it before (when Enigmail asked already) by clicking on the Enigmail toolbar button.

(This appears to have duplicated the Thunderbird account information - using the same name. This could be fixed by restarting Thunderbird.)

It looks like when (trying to) send the mail, Virtual Identity kicks in and changes something which causes Enigmail to think the identity is not configured.

Pressing the Enigmail toolbar button multiple times will consider the identity to be configured.

It is interesting that the local Drafts and Sent folder is being used in this case.

It seems to be related to the setting in "Virtual Identity" to store the underlying base identity, which wasn't activated currently.

[rene]

Hi,

sorry for your trouble, virtualIdentity was not compatible with enigmail 1.7. I hope some commits changed this, if you like you can try the beta from https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id (>= 0.9.25.5) or wait for the next release.

Regards, Rene