#10 Postbox installer wizard doesn't work

[Rob Lewis]

Not sure what may be at fault here, but I'm trying to run the OpenPGP setup wizard in Postbox 4.0.8. (Just got done installing GnuPG). The wizard gets to a point where it says "The wizard could not find the GnuPG executable" and asks me to locate it manually (it's in /usr/local/gnupg-2.1). But then it presents a standard Mac file dialog, which of course will not let me see system folders like /usr. All I can do is quit the wizard.

[Patrick Brunschwig]

First of all, if Enigmail requires GnuPG, then it's not the fault of GnuPG if Enigmail cannot find it. In other words, you cannot blame GpgOSX for something that doesn't work in Enigmail.

But being the author of Enigmail, I still can help you.

I assume you installed Enigmail 1.2.3 from the Postbox website. That version allows you to specify the path to GnuPG via the menu OpenPGP > Preferences. Once you activate the checkbox "Override with ...", you can type the path manuall. For GpgOSX, you would type:

/usr/local/bin/gpg2

However I have to warn you. Enigmail 1.2 was released in 2011, i.e. 5 years ago - long before GnuPG 2.1.x was released. The latest version of GnuPG you could get in 2011 was 2.0.x. That is, Enigmail 1.2.3 does not know about GnuPG 2.1.x.

GnuPG 2.1.x has major differences compared to GnuPG 2.0.x, which will break some of the functionality in Enigmail. I'd therefore strongly recommend that you uninstall GpgOSX and install GpgTools (https://gpgtools.org) instead. GpgTools provides GnugPG 2.0.28, which is supported by Enigmail.

PS. Don't ask me for a newer version of Enigmail for Postbox. Postbox provides its own version of Enigmail - I cannot do this on behalf of Postbox.

[Rob Lewis]

Thanks! I have installed GnuPG 2.1, which apparently doesn't come with an uninstaller. Is it the same as GpgOSX? How do I uninstall the latter? (I'm now installing GpgTools)

[Patrick Brunschwig]

The following command executed in a terminal line will delete GnuPG 2.1.x:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/gnupg-2.1