git commit signing failed: secret key not available

Question

I am getting this error when trying to commit using Git.

gpg: skipped \"name \": secret key not available
gpg: signing failed: secret ke         


        

Answer 1

I had a situation in which the same was happening to me in a Windows 10 machine.

$ git commit -m "Improve logging, imports and show time executed"
gpg: signing failed: Operation cancelled
gpg: signing failed: Operation cancelled
error: gpg failed to sign the data
fatal: failed to write commit object

The commands "C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuPG\bin\gpg.exe" --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG and gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG where giving me complete different results!

$ where gpg
C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\gpg.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuPG\bin\gpg.exe

The main reason was related to previous answers but on a different sense:

• I was creating the gpg keys using the git (configured path) version of GPG
• Git was configured to use the downloaded version of gpg for the commit.
• Seems GPG implementations use their own certificate database and storage.

I hope this can help anyone that stumbles on this message and previous answers do not solve ther issue.