B.2. Warning Messages

When executing GnuPG commands, you will probably see the message:

gpg: Warning: using insecure memory!

This warning is because non-root users can not lock memory pages. If users could lock memory pages, they could perform out-of-memory Denial of Service (DoS) attacks; thus, it is a possible security problem. For details, refer to http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/documentation/faqs.html#q6.1.

You might also see the following message:

gpg: WARNING: unsafe permissions on configuration file "/home/username/.gnupg/gpg.conf"

This message is shown if the file permissions of your configuration file allows others to read it. If you see this warning, it is recommended that you execute the following command to change the file permissions:

chmod 600 ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf

Another common warning messages is as follows:

gpg: WARNING: unsafe enclosing directory permissions on configuration file 
"/home/username/.gnupg/gpg.conf"

This message is shown if the file permissions of the directory that contains the configuration file allows others to read its contents. If you see this warning, it is recommended that you execute the following command to change the file permissions:

chmod 700 ~/.gnupg

If you upgraded from a previous version of GnuPG, you might see the message:

gpg: /home/username/.gnupg/gpg.conf:82: deprecated option "honor-http-proxy"
gpg: please use "keyserver-options honor-http-proxy" instead

This warning is because your ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf file contains the line:

honor-http-proxy

Version 1.0.7 and higher prefers a different syntax. Change the line to the following:

keyserver-options honor-http-proxy