GnuPG Sucks, and What to Do About It

August 9, 2026

Does software that could use PGP suddenly freeze for seemingly no reason, even if you don't use PGP? Then you are probably running a Linux system with GnuPG installed. Apparently, the default silently switched from using a standard GnuPG keystore to using some atrocious software called keyboxd.

The maintainer of keyboxd believes that cleaning up stale lock files is the responsibility of the administrator of the obviouslyl multi-user system that mounts home directories from NFS shares. Because ordinary consumers don't use this software. Except when they do, because GnuPG made a bad decision to use bad software.

Here's a slightly not-so-simple fix:

  1. Export your keys (if you even have any).
  2. Comment or remove the use-keyboxd line in ~/.gnupg/common.conf.
  3. Import your keys (if you even had any).

Technically, there is a cleanup command. One that no one knows about, because useful error messages aren't surfaced to end users.

Yeah, this sucks. Fedora is considering ditching GnuPG. But I can't wait, so while this workaround works for now, I'm going to investigate alternatives to GnuPG. This is the type of dumb decision that tells me the maintainers don't actually care about the real people who don't even know they are using their broken product.