Let me begin by saying I had the exact same issue...
Your GPG secrets are probably being handled by the Gnome Keyring, even if gpg-agent is running. This answer provides some details on the available options for it.
Another way is to disable the GPG component of the Gnome Keyring, so that gpg-agent is used:
- You can do this by removing (or renaming to something other than
*.desktop) the file /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-gpg.desktop.
- It's possible you already have the necessary settings for
gpg-agent to autostart. At least for me, running Ubuntu 13.04, that's true. However, if you need to, refer this post for some information on how to configure it.
- After logging off and on again, just
gpg-agent should be running, and it does respond both to settings in ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf and to SIGHUP signals.
- On a final note, it may be wise to also disable the SSH component of Gnome Keyring, since:
- You probably also don't want your SSH keys unlocked for the whole session, and might want to use/configure
ssh-agent or gpg-agent
- It's possible that your configuration for
gpg-agent autostart already includes SSH support (the default one in Ubuntu 13.04 does)
gpg-agent.conffile. So I want to ask: what is your GPG agent? Are you sure it is confgured properly? Where are you sending SIGHUP? – Andrea Corbellini Sep 24 '13 at 21:43gpg-connect-agentdoes indeed seem to work for seahorse (at least for me on 14.04), not justgpg-agent. This means that without disablinggnome-keyringyou should be able to use it out of the box. – Greg Feb 5 '15 at 13:06