• Thanks for your input. The user context under which the SSIS job runs has access to the server ( system admin rights)

    I actually tried different combinations of scenarios and came to the following conclusion - that might just have to do with the GnuPG application specifically - or may be a limitation of windows/SSIS.

    1. The job when run by sqlAgent was unable to determine any enviroment variables and registry settings, unless the server have an existing login session of the user credentials the job runs as. the job runs under a user credential that has sys admin rights.

    2. The failure of the Job was because the GnuPG application was unable to access certain files stored in the %APPDATA%\gnupg of the user credentials under which the SSIS job runs,.

    3. The GnuPG application provide an option to specify the homeDir as one of the arguments the executeable (C-style args). this was then used to overcome the limitation experienced in 2 above.

    I hope this will be helpful to others experiencing similar issues

    rgds

    Olu