[pmmail-list] Another PGP problem

[PMMail 2000]

On Mon, 03 Feb 2003 21:27:40 -0700, Martin Moran wrote:

>As it is right now, I'm hooped - I could do it through PGP Tray normally,
>except that PMMail and PGP Tray are currently fighting in the sandbox
>over control of my keyrings.

Martin,

I am not certain that any group functions will be implemented any time
soon. The number one reason being that the documentation for the new
SDK specifically states that :

>Important: The PGPGroup functions described in this chapter are deprecated. No
>replacements for these functions are available at this time. Avoid using these functions
>as much as possible to facilitate converting to the new key grouping mechanism
>when it becomes available.

We will take a look at this again sometime after the new version is
complete most likely.

>On Mon, 03 Feb 2003 11:29:36 +0100, Sorin Srbu wrote:
>
>>choose to encrypt the mail and press the send button, pmm says
>>there isn't a public key available for the mailaddress I'm trying
>>to send to.

We located this problem today and I believe Peter has already put in a
fix for it, but per the problems below, there is not a build with this
fix available yet.

>On Sat, 01 Feb 2003 10:48:56 -0700, Martin Moran wrote:
>
>>Hi there,
>>
>>I notice that PMMail now piggishly grabs the PGP Keyrings, so that you
>>cannot use PGP to perform other functions while PMMail is running.
>>
>>Any way to avoid this, aside from having 2 copies of your keyrings?
>
>Yea, I found that as well and passed it on to Brian.  There's a flag that has
>to be changed, believed to be a simple fix, that will happen on Monday
>morning.

Getting the two to play together was easy enough, now we just have to
get them to respect each other! 

Seriously, Peter was able to get them working together with only one
problem (generation of keys within PMMail). Basically, at startup,
PMMail looks for the PGPsdkService running on the system, if it is
there, then PMMail start with the PGPSDK in 'multi-client' mode. If
not, the SDK runs normally as a standalone. The only reason anyone
should download the new beta is if they are interested in testing this
functionality on Windows 98/NT systems. I have already tested on 2k/XP
but do not have a 98/NT system with PGPKeys setup right this minute. 

The number one problem we ran into here was that PMMail could not
generate new keys due to 'insufficient random bits'. Digging a little
further into the SDK we have found several new options available for
generating new keys and the acquisition of sufficient entropy.
Hopefully the work that we are doing now will not only solve that
problem, but further enhance the generation of keys within PMMail.

>On Fri, 31 Jan 2003 21:40:01 +0100, xavier caballe wrote:
>
>>It works so equal that a bug I reported before it's still here. When I try
>>to add my public key into a message (Options -> Security -> Include Public
>>Key) I have an error message that says "space for output was too small".

This has been fixed as well. PMMail was only allowing 8k for the keys,
but Peter has adjusted the buffer within the SDK so that it should be
sufficient for most any keys. It has worked fine with testing on 18k+
keys here.

>-On a signed message, the status line adds some characters after the email
>address of the person who signed the message and before the date.

Peter didn't explain exactly what was done, the current build solves
this problem as well. I should note that the status line in question is
the status bar of the message read window.

>-I have a key where the user's name has an accented letter. When I receive
>a message signed with that key, PMMail does not seem to recognize the
>destination private key and the "Passphrase needed" dialog shows an empty
>"Private key" field 

For the most part, this has been solved as well, but not completely. We
are still looking at how the characters are encoded by the SDK.  At
this point, this is the major hold up. We should know more tomorrow. 

There is a new build on the FTP server, but I cannot stress enough that
this is a beta!!! Please, do not install this build unless you are able
to accept possible problems. As with all builds, I have done limited
testing and it looks okay here, but every configuration is different.
Besides all of this, there will be another build tomorrow that will
solve the known issues. We definitely appreciate those willing to test
and generous enough to respond with their feedback, and that is why I
have placed this build on the FTP site. Again, I don't know how close
Peter was to a fix when he left today, so it may be that there is a new
build first thing in the AM...

Thanks,



===============================
Brandon T. King
brandonk@blueprintsoftwareworks.com
www.blueprintsoftwareworks.com
===============================

PGP Public Key Fingerprint: 8F3D 5966 0E41 3BA0  EECF CE93 6CD2 B20E
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