GPG on Ubuntu not responding

Question

I'm trying for the first time to use gpg to encrypt a file with a symmetric key, but gpg doesn't seem to respond when I use the -c switch.

gpg -v -c filename

.. just doesn't seem to do anything, nor to report any error, and just hangs until I hit ctrl-c.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

If you have DISPLAY variable set it may be used to display prompt for password in a dialog window (it may have not appeared if you have DISPLAY set to some weird value). To verify that unset the variable:

unset DISPLAY

and try again.

Answer 2

It might be timing out checking for the gpg-agent. I have trouble with this for some commands, and you can run gpg with gpg --no-use-agent, and it will proceed.

Answer 3

Try adding sudo before the command