NAME

       pinentry-curses - PIN or pass-phrase entry dialog for GnuPG

SYNOPSIS

       pinentry-curses [OPTION...]

DESCRIPTION

       pinentry-curses  is  a program that allows for secure entry of PINs or pass phrases.  That means it tries
       to take care that the entered information is not swapped to disk or temporarily  stored  anywhere.   This
       functionality  is  particularly  useful  for entering pass phrases when using encryption software such as
       GnuPG or e-mail clients using the same.  It uses an open protocol and is therefore not tied to particular
       software.

       pinentry-curses  implements  a  PIN entry dialog using the curses tool kit, meaning that it is useful for
       users working in text mode without the X Window System.  There are other flavors that implement PIN entry
       dialogs  that  use  an X tool kit.  If you have installed any of the latter programs then this program is
       not necessary because the X flavors automatically fall back to text mode if X is not active.

       pinentry-curses is typically used internally by gpg-agent.  Users don't normally have a reason to call it
       directly.

OPTIONS

       --version
              Print the program version and licensing information.

       --help Print a usage message summarizing the most useful command-line options.

       --debug, -d
              Turn  on  some debugging.  Mostly useful for the maintainers.  Note that this may reveal sensitive
              information like the entered pass phrase.

       --enhanced, -e
              Ask for timeouts and insurance, too.  Note that this is currently not fully supported.

       --no-global-grab, -g
              Grab the keyboard only when the window is focused.  Use this option if you are debugging  software
              using  pinentry-curses;  otherwise you may not be able to to access your X session anymore (unless
              you have other means to connect to the machine to kill pinentry-curses).

       --parent-wid N
              Use window ID N as the parent window for positioning the window.  Note, that  this  is  not  fully
              supported by all flavors of pinentry.

       --display STRING, --ttyname STRING, --ttytype STRING, --lc-type STRING, --lc-messages STRING
              These  options  are  used  to pass localization information to pinentry-curses.  They are required
              because pinentry-curses is usually called by some background  process  which  does  not  have  any
              information  on the locale and terminal to use.  Assuan protocol options are an alternative way to
              pass these information.

SEE ALSO

       pinentry-gtk-2(1), pinentry-qt(1), pinentry-fltk(1), pinentry-gnome3(1),  pinentry-tty(1),  gpg(1),  gpg-
       agent(1)

       The  full  documentation  for  pinentry-curses  is  maintained  as a Texinfo manual.  If the pinentry-doc
       package is installed, the command

              info pinentry

       should give you access to the complete manual.

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Peter Eisentraut for the Debian project.

                                                   27 Jan 2005                                PINENTRY-CURSES(1)