Opening pinentry in xterm from passmenu(dmenu)

pfr Adding xterm -class Pinentry -e to the beginning of the program[passmenu] line wont work (actually, it doesn't work) as it begins the sequence with an xterm rather than beginning with passmenu.sh piped through dmenu.

I'm afraid you've lost me. This should've worked as follows:

1. MOD + Shift + p triggers xterm -e.
2. xterm runs passmenu.sh inside a pseudo-tty--which is what's needed for pass to work.
3. passmenu.sh gathers a list of .gpg files--which are site labels--belonging to pass and echoes them to dmenu.
4. dmenu creates a menu from input read from stdin.
5. You choose which site's password you want to extract.
6. Site name is passed to pass which runs inside xterm.
7. pass contacts gpg-agent to retrieve password (PIN) for decryption of chosen site.
8. gpg-agent runs pinentry-curses to ask PIN for decryption. (All of this is running inside the xterm we've launched.)
9. pinentry-curses creates a dialog box, reads PIN, hands back PIN to gpg-agent; which in turn sends it on to pass.
10. pass uses PIN to decrypt site file which holds password; reads this password and either :
    a) copies this to the clipboard -- the -c option, or,
    b) writes password to xdotool, which simulates a user typing the password into some input box.

Which step is failing here?

If you want passmenu.sh to be run directly on MOD + Shift + p instead of via xterm you can do it by splitting the original passmenu.sh file into 2 pieces. Otherwise, the shell quoting needed to run pass inside xterm becomes a little hairy.

This is piece one, passmenu.sh. Make it executable and call this without xterm -e:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

shopt -s nullglob globstar

typeit=0
if [[ $1 == "--type" ]]; then
	typeit=1
	shift
fi

prefix=${PASSWORD_STORE_DIR-~/.password-store}
password_files=( "$prefix"/**/*.gpg )
password_files=( "${password_files[@]#"$prefix"/}" )
password_files=( "${password_files[@]%.gpg}" )

password=$(printf '%s\n' "${password_files[@]}" | dmenu "$@")

[[ -n $password ]] || exit

xterm -class Pinentry -e ~/bin/run-pass.sh "$typeit" "$password"

Piece two, run-pass.sh, gets called from passmenu.sh. Put this file in ~/bin; make it executable chmod 755 ~/bin/run-pass.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

if [[ $# -ne 2 ]]
then	printf '%s: needs 2 arguments\n' $0 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

typeit=$1
password=$2

if [[ $typeit -eq 0 ]]; then
	pass show -c "$password" 2>/dev/null
else
	pass show "$password" | { IFS= read -r pass; printf %s "$pass"; } |
		xdotool type --clearmodifiers --file -
fi

This works slightly differently from what I've outlined above, but, you should be able to figure it out easily. See if this works.

rvp since you're running under X, wouldn't it be easier to set ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf to run pinentry-gtk and bypass all these minor irritations entirely?

pfr Upon removing read x, on the first instance obviously, the pinentry window opens, but once you enter the passphrase the window closes, also clearing the clipboard.

Update: patched patch!
Turns out pass is written in bash (I had assumed C) and it wasn't too hard to go through it and find the problem. There is a bug in pass with non-interactive shells.

Patch:

--- pass.orig	2020-07-17 13:45:22.000000000 +0000
+++ pass	2020-10-06 23:08:41.159955217 +0000
@@ -157,6 +157,12 @@
 	local sleep_argv0="password store sleep on display $DISPLAY"
 	pkill -f "^$sleep_argv0" 2>/dev/null && sleep 0.5
 	local before="$(xclip -o -selection "$X_SELECTION" 2>/dev/null | $BASE64)"
+	# Explicitly ignore SIGHUP because "disown" only works in interactive shells.
+	# Otherwise, in non-interactive cases like "xterm -e passmenu" or "xterm -e pass",
+	# which is needed to supply a terminal for pinentry when the script is called from
+	# a GUI, bash will kill xclip when the script finishes ie. before $CLIP_TIME has
+	# elapsed.
+	trap '' HUP
 	echo -n "$1" | xclip -selection "$X_SELECTION" || die "Error: Could not copy data to the clipboard"
 	(
 		( exec -a "$sleep_argv0" bash <<<"trap 'kill %1' TERM; sleep '$CLIP_TIME' & wait" )
@@ -173,7 +179,7 @@
 		qdbus org.kde.klipper /klipper org.kde.klipper.klipper.clearClipboardHistory &>/dev/null
 
 		echo "$before" | $BASE64 -d | xclip -selection "$X_SELECTION"
-	) >/dev/null 2>&1 & disown
+	) >/dev/null 2>&1 &
 	echo "Copied $2 to clipboard. Will clear in $CLIP_TIME seconds."
 }

You can either use the original passmenu.sh or the 2-piece version (both called via xterm -e ... as before to supply a terminal). They both do the same thing, just their aesthetics differ (with the first you get a blank screen before pinentry when selecting items; with the other you don't). You won't need the read x pauses now.

OK...back to sleep. (Woke up for a whizz and this started nagging, so I had to sit down and do something about it.)