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gpg: Note: database_open waiting for lock (held by)

What

This error often happens when trying to read keys from GPG or when doing a git commit when you've got signing enabled

For example this is the error I got

~ using ☁️  default/
➜ gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long


gpg: Note: database_open 134217901 waiting for lock (held by 76922) ...
gpg: Note: database_open 134217901 waiting for lock (held by 76922) ...
gpg: Note: database_open 134217901 waiting for lock (held by 76922) ...
gpg: Note: database_open 134217901 waiting for lock (held by 76922) ...
gpg: Note: database_open 134217901 waiting for lock (held by 76922) ...
^C
gpg: signal Interrupt caught ... exiting

Solution

rm ~/.gnupg/public-keys.d/pubring.db.lock

I saw a lot of chatter on the internet about using ps aux and all this guff, and none of them worked as well as just deleting the lock file.

I'm not sure if this has a long-standing effect, but so far no issues.

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