File: gnupg.info,  Node: Invoking GPG-AGENT,  Next: Invoking DIRMNGR,  Prev: Installation,  Up: Top

2 Invoking GPG-AGENT
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'gpg-agent' is a daemon to manage secret (private) keys independently
from any protocol.  It is used as a backend for 'gpg' and 'gpgsm' as
well as for a couple of other utilities.

   The agent is automatically started on demand by 'gpg', 'gpgsm',
'gpgconf', or 'gpg-connect-agent'.  Thus there is no reason to start it
manually.  In case you want to use the included Secure Shell Agent you
may start the agent using:

     gpg-connect-agent /bye

If you want to manually terminate the currently-running agent, you can
safely do so with:

     gpgconf --kill gpg-agent

You should always add the following lines to your '.bashrc' or whatever
initialization file is used for all shell invocations:

     GPG_TTY=$(tty)
     export GPG_TTY

It is important that this environment variable always reflects the
output of the 'tty' command.  For W32 systems this option is not
required.

   Please make sure that a proper pinentry program has been installed
under the default filename (which is system dependent) or use the option
'pinentry-program' to specify the full name of that program.  It is
often useful to install a symbolic link from the actual used pinentry
(e.g.  '/usr/local/bin/pinentry-gtk') to the expected one (e.g.
'/usr/local/bin/pinentry').

*Note Option Index::, for an index to 'GPG-AGENT''s commands and
options.

* Menu:

* Agent Commands::      List of all commands.
* Agent Options::       List of all options.
* Agent Configuration:: Configuration files.
* Agent Signals::       Use of some signals.
* Agent Examples::      Some usage examples.
* Agent Protocol::      The protocol the agent uses.