[Enigmail] Telling Enigmail to remember passwords?

[Michael J Gruber]

John W. Moore III venit, vidit, dixit 12.02.2009 12:12:
> Michael J Gruber wrote:
>> Ringo Kamens venit, vidit, dixit 11.02.2009 02:33:
>>> Wow. I can't believe I never saw that before.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> Ringo
>>>
>>> Phil Stracchino wrote:
>>>> Ringo Kamens wrote:
>>>>> Is there any way to make enigmail remember passwords longer? Maybe like
>>>>> until shutdown or until I close Thunderbird? I'm on the most recent
>>>>> version of Ubuntu. If I have to install another program that's fine by me.
>>>> OpenPGP menu -> Preferences -> Basic tab
>>>> Passphrase settings:
>>>> Remember password for [ ] minutes
>> Also, you might want to look into using gpg-agent.
> 
> I disagree; unless One requires the 'features' of GPG2 then GPG Agent is
> totally unnecessary!  Enigmail can/will cache the passphrase for  the
> necessary amount of time.

John,

gpg-agent isn't really about making gpg2 features available, although it
is part of gpg2 now.

The main point is that gpg-agent is small and well-audited. OTOH, having
Enigmail cache the passphrase means having Thunderbird cache the
passphrase. So, from a security perspective gpg-agent is the much better
approach, rather than being "totally unnecessary". May I suggest you
recheck whether your strong wording is really an appropriate match to my
"Also, you might want to..."?

Besides, gpg-agent keeps the passphrase across restarts of TB and
provides it to other clients as well, although this might not matter to
the OP.

Cheers,
Michael