PINE + GPG - mini-howto

UPDATE! (2005-01-02) I found an excellent article for setting up pine with GPG capabilities. If you still wish to do it manually, skip the article and continue onwards. I still think adding the fingerprint info to your headers is a good idea (if your mailer allows it).

NOTE: usage of pine and gnupg (gnupg manual) in general is not included here. Instead this document is just a bare-bones description of how to use them in combination. There are lots of webpages to address their individual use.

Manually setting Pine up to use GPG for encrypting and clearsigning messages:

Assumption: you have already generated your GPG secret key, etc.

(1) cd .gnupg/

(2) ln -s /usr/bin/gpg gpgencrypt; ln -s /usr/bin/gpg gpgclearsign

(3) cd ..

(4) run pine

(5) Enter setup (M for main menu, S for setup).

(6) "C" Go into the Config menu

(7) arrow down til nearly towards the end.

Edit "display-filters" (ie. highlight it and type "a"
Add these two filter rules (ignore the line numbers):

1. _BEGINNING("-----BEGIN GnuPG MESS")_ /usr/bin/gpg -d
2. _BEGINNING("-----BEGIN PGP MESS")_ /usr/bin/gpg -d

(8) edit the sending filters in the same manner (note: "taw" is my username):

1. /home/taw/.gnupg/gpgclearsign --clearsign
2. /home/taw/.gnupg/gpgencrypt -eas -r _RECIPIENTS_

(9) I like to include authentication info in my headers.

Approximately, halfway down that config. interface, you can find the tag "customized-hdrs".
Edit/add two headers (these are mine):

1. X-GPG-PUBLIC_KEY: http://www.pobox.com/~taw/taw-pubkey.asc
2. X-GPG-FINGRPRINT: 2C8A7691 - 0212 8177 4194 F27C 74EE 35A0 A03A 7167

Though not fool-proof, the fingerprint should match the actual fingerprint of the public key.

To use it:

Upon sending the message with ^x, you should be able to scroll through
the various filters (with ^n and ^p).

Mutt:

Mutt does this much more sanely, though configuring mutt is non-trivial.
Mutt also handles signatures nicely as well.

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Last updated: 2005-01-02