Page MenuHome GnuPG

Draft: Kleopatra: improve info on private key location in details
Open, NormalPublic

Description

Follow up of T7128.

In the upper part of the certificate details window there is a line starting with "Private Key:" just above the tabs.

The info here is misleading if not all subkeys are stored in the same location.
See e.g. the picture below, where the primary key was moved to a smart card and deleted on disk, but the subkey is still on disk:

It seems only the storage location of the primary key is taken into account.

I propose to only show the storage location in this place if all subkeys have the same one. Otherwise we could display a helpful hint. Some possibilities:

  • Private Key: Check subkey storage locations
  • Private Key: Ambiguous, check subkey locations
  • Private Key: Subkeys stored in different places

An other possibility would be to get rid of the "Private Key: " info field altogether. Most of its information is available in the storage column of the subkeys tab. Which is of course less discoverable. And does not contain any information regarding duplicate existences of a key on disk and on smart card(s). ("On this computer and on a smart card")

Details

Version
VSD 3.3.0, Gpg4win 4.4.0

Event Timeline

ebo renamed this task from Draft: Kleopatra: information on private key location in details to Draft: Kleopatra: improve info on private key location in details.Thu, Feb 27, 9:40 AM
ebo triaged this task as Normal priority.Fri, Feb 28, 2:28 PM

In the spirit of making the UI less cluttered, I'd be in favor of removing this line entirely.

If we keep it, then I think some phrasing like in the second case makes most sense: it should tell both that the keys are stored in different places, and where to find this information. But I'm not entirely happy with the exact phrasing yet