Problem with GPG key generation on Mac OS with pinentry

[neiljohari]

https://github.com/eecs-autograder/autograder-full-stack/blob/master/docs/development_setup.md

The instructions for setting up secrets are within the ag-server folder, but the command to generate these doesn't seem to work (assuming running them within the folder prior to the docker compose commands is the right thing to do).

The generate command itself seems to halt when generating the GPG key via gnupg.GPG(...).

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[neiljohari]

It appears that this was due to pinentry issues on macOS. Leaving this issue open as I will attempt to add some further documentation + a PR to prevent pinentry hanging

[james-perretta]

@neiljohari So for a development full stack setup, you actually don't have to run generate_secrets.py yourself--the Docker build is configured to run that automatically inside the container, so hopefully this isn't an issue for that kind of deployment.

For a non-docker server dev setup (which does require running generate_secrets.py), is it possible to temporarily disable pineentry if that's what's causing the problem?

If that's not really an option, then my preferred solution would be one that only sets expect_passphrase=False if pineentry is in use. Perhaps adding a command line argument?

[neiljohari]

@james-perretta Unfortunately it's been a while since I had made this issue and created the patch (I only just recently PR'ed it), so I don't totally remember exactly what happened (probably should've documented it more thoroughly).

I think my issue was when the Docker build was executing the command, and I wound up debugging it by running the script myself.

I will try to re-deploy this when I have time and see where the issue occurs again, and get back to you. I can't promise when that will be though, so if any other contributors see this and have time to play around please do!

[james-perretta]

@neiljohari, sure thing. Sorry I didn't see your issue sooner--I recently realized that I wasn't getting email notifications when new issues were opened and had to change my settings.

Anyway, I don't see this as super urgent. If someone else you know runs into this issue on a mac, have them email [email protected] and I'll help them diagnose. Thanks!