Please describe the problem:
Ubuntu 8.04
Evolution 2.22.3.1

Evolution and Seahorse fail to fetch a matching public key.

Steps to reproduce:
1. I get a gpg signed message from someone whose public key is not in my keyring.
2. Evolution says "Signature exists, but need public key". When I click on the wax seal icon I get more information as below:

Actual results:
gpg: WARNING: unsafe enclosing directory permissions on configuration file `/home/duncan/.gnupg/gpg.conf'
gpg: armor header: Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
gpg: Signature made 2007-10-31T23:19:27 CET using DSA key ID 8AB6137F
gpg: Can't check signature: public key not found

* This information is either wrong or something is broken. The public key is on at least one of the listed key servers in Seahorse and Seahorse is set to automatically retrieve remote keys.

Expected results:
What I expected
* I get a gpg signed message from someone whose public key is not in my keyring.
* Evolution either
   * Retrieves the public from a key server and announces that the mess* age is signed correctly
   or
   * Tries to retrieve the public key, but something goes wrong, it tells me what has gone wrong ('Seahorse is not configured to automatically retrieve remote public keys. Please adjust your settings' or 'Seahorse reports that the remote public key is not found on the listed key servers')

Does this happen every time?
Yes

Other information:
In either case the current wording of the message is not useful, 'public key not found' does not help me solve the cause of the problem. did evolution try to find it? did seahorse tyr and fail? why was it not found?