Installed packages on the system which fails: Hygiea:~ # rpm -qa | grep pinentry pinentry-gtk2-0.8.3-3.3.x86_64 pinentry-0.8.3-3.3.x86_64 pinentry-qt4-0.8.3-3.3.x86_64 --gen-key works in xterm But when I do unset DISPLAY the above error happens. Found this during debugging remotely for another user having issues but there the behaviour is again a bit different what I cannot reproduce. Still reporting what I could reproduce myself.