Gpgtools MacGPG2 → 2.2.0

Solution

2017-07-11 Fixed as expert option in MacGPG
add "shared-access" to ~/.gnupg/scdaemon.conf

mouse008 used additional commands:

• Switching from S/MIME emails to OpenPGP emails - usually one needs to do nothing, just use OpenPGP mode. But if automatic switch hasn't happened - typing in a Terminal window gpg --card-status should do the job.
• Switching from OpenPGP back to S/MIME often (always so far?) does not happen automatically. To manually switch the Yubikey token from OpenPGP applet to PIV applet, just type in the terminal window yubico-piv-tool -a status. That's enough to bring the token back to PIV mode.

2017-07-10 filed GnuPG #3267 Werner says, behaves as expected, wontfix

Copy of initial user feature request from below linked discussion

My hardware token (YubiKey NEO) has several applets, including PIV and OpenPGP. Needless to say, I need and use both of them.

On Mac OS X, tokend connects to the token immediately upon its insertion, which is necessary to present the token as a (PIV) keychain in the Keychain Access, and make its keys/certificates otherwise available to the Mac OS X applications.

However, when I try to use gpg, or any component of GPGTools that needs access to this token (to its OpenPGP applet), this tool detects that the token is already being used - and refuses to connect to it, with the following messages in the /tmp/scdaemon.log:

2016-09-06 21:09:24 scdaemon[67807] PC/SC OPEN failed: sharing violation (0x8010000b)
2016-09-06 21:09:24 scdaemon[67807] PC/SC OPEN failed: sharing violation (0x8010000b)
2016-09-06 21:09:33 scdaemon[67807] PC/SC OPEN failed: sharing violation (0x8010000b)

Expected

I would expect and like sharing - especially since they share the “token” but not the “applet”: PIV applications cannot use OpenPGP interface, and vs. versa (I think).

I know about the design ideology (security concerns), but this kills usability, particularly with Apple Mail, where I need to process both PGP-protected and S/MIME-protected emails (obviously from different crowds, but that is not relevant).

Same applies to Thunderbird, except there is no tokend involved - just inability of GPG suite to share the token with PIV suite. I’d like it remedied.

Additional info

There is a workaround - but it is ugly: insert the token, start Apple Mail, process all the S/MIME emails. Quit Mail, kill OpenSC.tokend. Run “gpg2 —card-status” (assuming it connects and provides expected result). Start Mail, process PGP/MIME emails. Quit Mail, remove the token, re-insert it - now PIV and S/MIME are functioning again.

Ugly as a mule. Can you please either remove this restriction, or better yet - add a configuration parameter that would allow token sharing?