Cannot Find Key: "sigtop: cannot decrypt database key: cannot find encryption key"

[piercegwang]

OS: NixOS (Custom build of the latest version of sigtop, 0.15.0) Problem: No matter what command I run, I receive a sigtop: cannot decrypt database key: cannot find encryption key error.

Things I've tried:

• giving sigtop my Signal directory directly (~/.config/Signal and /home/user/.config/Signal)
• running various commands (check-database, export-messages, etc.)
• giving it a keyfile with -k, which did not work even though the option -k is listed in some of the usage examples
  • (aka usage: sigtop export-messages [-i] [-c conversation] [-d signal-directory] [-f format] [-k [system:]keyfile] [-s interval] [directory])

I see that other people have posted issues unrelated to this, and I assume that at some level this program must work... so, my only conclusion is that I'm doing something stupid or missing something. But, I can't for the life of me figure out what that is. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[olewales]

Just installed sigtop for the first time and encountered the same issue. Version: sigtop@v0.15.1-0.20240913183615-8909429fc593 Signal desktop version: 7.21.0

[tbvdm]

What desktop environment are you using?

How did you generate the keyfile, and what is the command you used to pass the keyfile to sigtop?

[piercegwang]

Thanks for replying! I'm using KDE Plasma 6.

For the keyfile, I didn't know I had to generate one. From what I could tell from the sigtop man page, it just requires the directory. None of the example commands passed a keyfile, so I was sort of just guessing along the way. These are the commands I tried:

• sigtop export-key -d ~/.config/Signal/ key.json
  • sigtop: cannot get encryption key: cannot find encryption key
  • I've also tried variations of this, with different kinds of files, writing to standard output (by leaving the file blank), removing the -d argument, etc. Always the same output though...
• sigtop db -d /home/alice/.config/Signal signal.db
  • Returns: sigtop: cannot decrypt database key: cannot find encryption key
• sigtop export-messages -d /home/alice/.config/Signal messages
  • Returns: sigtop: cannot decrypt database key: cannot find encryption key

What other commands should I run to get the encryption key? Are there documented hoops I have to jump through currently due to weird signal encryption things? Thanks for your help again.

[tbvdm]

I understand your confusion. KDE support in sigtop is subpar currently. The documentation is not completely up to date either.

To generate a keyfile for KDE, run:

kwallet-query -f "Chromium Keys" -r "Chromium Safe Storage" kdewallet >keyfile

Then use the -k option to pass the keyfile to sigtop. For example:

sigtop export-messages -k keyfile messages

You can also pipe the kwallet-query output directly to sigtop if you prefer. For example:

kwallet-query -f "Chromium Keys" -r "Chromium Safe Storage" kdewallet | sigtop export-messages -k - messages

[piercegwang]

Fantastic. Finally got around to testing this, and it works like a charm. Would it be helpful if made a pull request to add this info to the readme?

[tbvdm]

sigtop is now able to get the encryption key from KWallet. You no longer have to run kwallet-query and provide a keyfile.