pinentry-curses command not found

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

pinentry-curses: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: pinentry-curses: command not found

Solutions to pinentry-curses: command not found

How To Fix pinentry-curses: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu pinentry-curses is provided by pinentry-curses package.

pinentry-curses is:

This package contains a program that allows for secure entry of PINs or pass phrases. That means it tries to take care that the entered information is not swapped to disk or temporarily stored anywhere. This functionality is particularly useful for entering pass phrases when using encryption software such as GnuPG or e-mail clients using the same. It uses an open protocol and is therefore not tied to particular software.

The program contained in this package implements a PIN entry dialog using the curses tool kit, meaning that it is useful for users working in text mode without the X Window System. There are sibling packages that implement PIN entry dialogs that use an X tool kit. If you install any of the graphical packages then this package is not necessary because the sibling packages automatically fall back to text mode if X is not active.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install pinentry-curses

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install pinentry-curses.

sudo apt -y install pinentry-curses

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install pinentry-curses

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix pinentry-curses command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.