[ic] [PATCH] [RFC] PGP hard failure workaround

[Dan Browning]

* John Beima <support@affordable-web-pages.com> [2003-06-04 14:44]:
> Quoting Dan Browning <db@kavod.com>:
> 
> > I have been experiencing the "PGP hard failure" error:
> > 
> > 	PGP failed with error level 12, status 12:
> > 	PGP hard failure, command that failed: [...]
> > 
> > The symptom is that on a busy system, the encryption operation will 
> > occasionally (1 in 100 or so) fail, resulting in no credit card at all.
> > 
> > Has anyone else experienced this error?  If not, could you try the steps
> > to reproduce the problem (below)?  If you have, could you try the
> > patch below and let me know if it helps?
> > 
> >  * Software: 
> >    - Interchange 4.9 CVS, 05/13 and 04/04 both affected.
> >    - Interchange RPC and HIGH mode both affected.
> >    - Red Hat 7.3 and 9.0 both affected
> >    - GPG 1.2.1

[...]

> Actually Dan, I may just have this one for you...
> 
> I found that the gnugpg that ships with RedHat only allows a key to be in use by
> one gpg client at a time.
> 
> So if you have two orders hitting the server at the same time, the second one's
> gpg will fail because the "key" has a lock on it by the first one.
> 
> Gpg does give an error back when this happens...

Thanks a lot for the input, John.  I'm not sure that this is the case with 
recent versions, because the only patches that Red Hat applies to gnupg (as 
of 1.2.1-4) aren't related to what we're talking about (one is a security 
fix, the other is a makefile path correction).

Perhaps you could try the "steps to reproduce" and see if you can reproduce 
the problem.

-- 
Dan Browning, Kavod Technologies, <db@kavod.com> 360.843.4074x217
6700 NE 162nd Ave, Ste 611-210, Vancouver, WA.    Random Fortune:
Volley Theory:
	It is better to have lobbed and lost than never to have lobbed at all.