Enigmail "could not find GnuPG" on Ubuntu

OpenPGP addon for Mozilla Thunderbird

Brought to you by: pbrunschwig

Enigmail "could not find GnuPG" on Ubuntu

Forum: Enigmail Support

Creator: Anonymous

Created: 2019-07-10

Updated: 2019-07-11

Anonymous - 2019-07-10

Hello. I'm trying to setup Enigmail (20.0.11) to work in Thunderbird (version 60.6.1). I have gpg (2.2.4-1ubuntu1.2) installed. It is located in /usr/bin/gpg.

When I enter this path in the preferences it says "Could not find GnuPG".

When I click on the browse button to locate GnuPG I get an error when I select /usr: "Permission denied". This are the permissions but they all seem to be okay:

drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Jul 4 11:32 usr drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 45056 Jul 4 14:05 bin -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1017384 Jan 10 14:07 gpg lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Jan 10 14:07 gpg2 -> gpg

GPG works fine from the command line.
My System ist Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS.
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Olav Seyfarth - 2019-07-10

Most probably this is an access rights issue (as the error indicated), but not in /usr but in your ~/.gnupg or ~./thunderbird.

And: Please, DON'T set a path in enigmail prefs at all. You seem to have a standard install, Enigmail does find the correct GnuPG executable itself.

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Anonymous - 2019-07-11

Thanks for your answer. This are the permissions for ~/.gnupg which seems fine:

drwx------ 4 jan jan 4096 Jul 10 18:23 .gnupg

I don't have a ~/.thunderbird here.

The Setup Wizard for Enigmail currently won't find gpg. When I use the "Browse" button to locate it I get the "Permission denied" message.
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Patrick Brunschwig - 2019-07-11

What are the permissions on /usr ?

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- Anonymous - 2019-07-11
  
  drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Jul 4 11:32 usr
  
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Olav Seyfarth - 2019-07-11

In my experience, if GnuPG/Enigmail/Thunderbird reports "permission denied", it always was a permission issue. Re-think where you changed permissions, consult your bash history. If you can call gpg from the Terminal as user, GnuPG permissions should be fine. You may double-check the files within ~/.gnupg anyway. But where is your TB profile? Do you use a portable TB? Did you install the AddOn via native package, via snap or yourself as XPI from enigmail.net? You may use strace to find out!

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Anonymous - 2019-07-11

Okay. So I think I figured it out.
I installed Thunderbird via snap and Enigmail via the Add-ons Manager in Thunderbird. AppArmor is enabled by default and blocks access to the /usr directory.

It works fine when disabling AppAmor:

sudo service apparmor teardown

or when Thunderbird is installed via apt-get.

Thanks for the help!
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