W32 Notes - Using the GNU Privacy Guard
Description: Using the GNU Privacy Guard

Up: System Notes

### 9.1 Microsoft Windows Notes

The port to Microsoft Windows based OSes is pretty new and has some limitations we might remove over time. Note, that we have not yet done any security audit and you should not use any valuable private key. In particular, using it on a box with more than one user, might lead to a key compromise.

It is quite possible that the current version does not even build.

Current limitations are:

- The `LISTKEYS` Assuan command of `gpgsm` is not supported. Using the command line options `--list-keys` or `--list-secret-keys` does however work.
- No support for CRL checks. By default the option `--disable-crl-checks` has been turned on and the log will show an appropriate warning message. The reason for this is that the separate CRL checking daemin (`dirmngr`) has not been ported to W32.
- `gpgconf` does not create backup files, so in case of trouble your configuration file might get lost.
- `watchgnupg` is not available. Logging to sockets is not possible.
- The periodical smartcard status checking done by `scdaemon` is not yet supported.
- Detached running of the gpg-agent is not directly supported. It needs to be started in a console and left alone then.