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Last active October 7, 2024 07:24
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How to understand the `gpg failed to sign the data` problem in git

Problem

You have installed GPG, then tried to commit and suddenly you see this error message after it:

error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

Debug

For understanding what's going on, first check what git is doing, so add GIT_TRACE=1 at the beginning of the command you used before (git commit or git rebase):

GIT_TRACE=1 git commit

With that you can see what GPG is doing: Probably you will see something like this

10:37:22.346480 run-command.c:637       trace: run_command: gpg --status-fd=2 -bsau <your GPG key>

(Check if your GPG key is correct)

Execute that gpg command again in the command line:

gpg --status-fd=2 -bsau <your GPG key>

👆🏻 With this now you could see what happened in detail!

Solutions

We can have many problems, but I list what I found:

  1. It could be that the GPG key was expired: https://stackoverflow.com/a/47561300/532912

  2. Another thing could be that the secret key was not set properly (In my case the message said gpg: signing failed: No secret key as it can be see in the image below). image It means that is not finding the key that was set. You would need to set up the GPG key in Git (again):

    • List the secret keys available in GPG.
    gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long
    • Copy your key
    • Set your key for your user in git
    git config --global user.signingkey <your key>
  3. Another popular solution that could help was shared here by @NirajanMahara: https://gist.github.com/paolocarrasco/18ca8fe6e63490ae1be23e84a7039374?permalink_comment_id=3767413#gistcomment-3767413

  4. You can see in the thread of this gist other ways to find the solution to other problems. I recommend to read the Github guide for signing commits with GPG.

Hope it helps!

@zrajeev
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zrajeev commented Mar 25, 2024

On MacOS, I have to install pinentry-mac to enter passphrase

brew install pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

This is the true solution 👍

@bdangeb6tp
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bdangeb6tp commented Mar 27, 2024

What worked for me was slightly different than brew install pinentry-mac

I instead used reinstall since it was already installed.

brew reinstall pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

@JordanUnderwood12
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I was also having a similar problem, but now everything is good.

@Fuseteam
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Fuseteam commented Apr 10, 2024

gpg --status-fd=2 -bsau F93581548CDBCCB7
[GNUPG:] KEY_CONSIDERED E4C9A7533D31D43B288E162FF93581548CDBCCB7 2
[GNUPG:] BEGIN_SIGNING H10

and it just hangs there.

Hello, did you find the solution? It obviously waits for the password. I am on Ubuntu and I had the same problem when creating the key, used some tricks from here. But now am stuck when trying to use the key for the first time. Can't believe this is so hard to do.

i also ran into this, i managed to workaround it using this @NirajanMahara steps at https://gist.github.com/paolocarrasco/18ca8fe6e63490ae1be23e84a7039374?permalink_comment_id=3767413#gistcomment-3767413; by doing that it prompts for the password, after which it just works. i suppose there should be a way to configure gpg to prompt for a password properly

@saadazghour
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saadazghour commented Apr 10, 2024

I'm on Ubuntu, Thanks @NirajanMahara ,It's worked for me 👍

@MuhanguziDavid
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On MacOS, I have to install pinentry-mac to enter passphrase

brew install pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

Thank you!

@robrakaric
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My issue was that I had added the PGP key with my email, while my commits on the repo were signed with my GitHub-provided noreply email address.

To solve this issue, I had to run gpg --edit-key [your key] followed by gpg> adduid to add the second email address.

https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/managing-commit-signature-verification/associating-an-email-with-your-gpg-key

This worked for me! Thanks

@bitsector
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On MacOS, I have to install pinentry-mac to enter passphrase

brew install pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

This is the true solution 👍

This worked for me as well. Thanks @bdangeb6tp !!

@shink
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shink commented May 20, 2024

@NirajanMahara Thanks so much! It works for me.

@ksuderman
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After upgrading my OSX to Monterey it stoped to work without reason. The GIT_TRACE didn't help to much because everything was correctly set. In the end I reinstalled the GPG Sutie via brew with the command brew reinstall --cask gpg-suite and it fixed the issue.

Thanks @tmoreira2020 after trying all the other solutions Google led me to, this is the one that worked for me.

@MdSadiqMd
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This had worked for me
delete the .gnupg folder

rm -rf ~/.gnupg/

and again generate the keys with

gpg --full-generate-key

@jlschrag
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I ran this issue because I had a repo holding onto an expired local key, while I was trying to use a global key. So, even though I had run git config --global user.signingkey ABCDE, it wasn't using key ABCDE. If I ran GIT_TRACE as described above, then pulled out the gpg2 --status-fd=2 -bsau FEDCBA & ran it separately, I would get

gpg: skipped "FEDCBA": No secret key

[GNUPG:] INV_SGNR 9 FEDCBA

[GNUPG:] FAILURE sign 17

Confirmed the repo was reference the expired key by running git config --get user.signingkey. Fix was to run git config --unset user.signingkey which removed the local key. Thereafter, the repo used the global key (ABCDE).

@tucq88
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tucq88 commented Jul 22, 2024

On MacOS, I have to install pinentry-mac to enter passphrase

brew install pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

This is the true solution 👍

This worked for me as well. Thanks @bdangeb6tp !!

Still works in July 2024

@jonathanlbt1
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git config --global gpg.program 'C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuPG\bin\gpg.exe'

Thank you for your help! It worked for me!

@vinicius-oa
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After upgrading my OSX to Monterey it stoped to work without reason. The GIT_TRACE didn't help to much because everything was correctly set. In the end I reinstalled the GPG Sutie via brew with the command brew reinstall --cask gpg-suite and it fixed the issue.

Doing this resolved my issue. Thanks!

That helped me, thanks!

@barraIhsan
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I you're on WSL2, maybe this can help:

* Add those lines to `~/.gnupg/gpg.conf`
  ```
  use-agent 
  pinentry-mode loopback
  ```

* Add this line to `~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf`
  ```
  allow-loopback-pinentry
  ```

OMG tysm, I literally had no idea why gpg just froze and have to wait like 5 minute to prompt the passphrase, that sometimes even broken (i typed correctly but it still said incorrect). TYSM

@weskoerber
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In my case, the error was caused because I wrote the config line as signkey instead of signingkey...

@aali309
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aali309 commented Sep 12, 2024

I you're on WSL2, maybe this can help:

  • Add those lines to ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf
    use-agent 
    pinentry-mode loopback
    
  • Add this line to ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
    allow-loopback-pinentry
    

This worked for me after trying all methods to resolve with m3 chip

below was my error when signing commits


14:40:24.528193 exec-cmd.c:139          trace: resolved executable path from Darwin stack: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/git
14:40:24.528684 exec-cmd.c:238          trace: resolved executable dir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin
14:40:24.529477 git.c:460               trace: built-in: git commit -S -m 'signed commit'
14:40:24.533313 run-command.c:655       trace: run_command: gpg --status-fd=2 -bsau <gpgKey>
error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

@ijkeleher-anz
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On MacOS, I have to install pinentry-mac to enter passphrase

brew install pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

Thanks for this!

10th-Jan-2024; Still works (mac m1)

And still working in September 2024, cheers!

@kyteidev
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kyteidev commented Oct 2, 2024

On MacOS, I have to install pinentry-mac to enter passphrase

brew install pinentry-mac
echo "pinentry-program $(which pinentry-mac)" >> ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
killall gpg-agent

Thanks for this!
10th-Jan-2024; Still works (mac m1)

And still working in September 2024, cheers!

also works for me

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