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Re: Upgrade to Bookworm, now GNOME keyring dies--no access to stored SSH key passwords

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On 14/08/2023 07:30, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> I have been using the GNOME keyring applet to manage the SSH public key
> passwords I use as it prompts to save passwords and then lets me SSH to
> other hosts without out a password prompt.

I do not know how it is arranged in Gnome, but I hope my observations 
still might be helpful.

> systems on my LAN and was greeted with a password prompt for the
> corresponding public key

To be precise, it is the passphrase do decrypt your *private* key. A 
public key may be known to anybody. Private key is a secret that allows 
to prove that you have it without disclosing of this private key. 
Encryption using a passphrase is a means to mitigate consequences if the 
private key is stolen.

An ssh agent opens a socket and exposes its location through an 
environment variable (perhaps using "systemctl set-environment", but I 
am not sure). Try

     env | grep SSH

There are multiple implementations of SSH agents: openssh, gpg, 
keepassxc(?), perhaps gnome has more (seahorse? I am unsure concerning 
the role of secrets service). It may happen that in your case multiple 
instances are running:

/usr/lib/systemd/user/ssh-agent.service
/usr/lib/systemd/user/gpg-agent-ssh.socket
/etc/X11/Xsession.d/90x11-common_ssh-agent

GUI prompt may be just a proxy to an actual ssh agent. It just listens 
its socket and displaying a password prompt on demand and passing other 
messages literally.

> Now, while typing this email all keyring PIDs have vanished!

It may be a way to minimize RAM usage. The agent may be a 
socket-activated process.

     systemctl --user list-sockets

Check owner of $SSH_AUTH_SOCK using ss or lsof. It may give some clue 
what is really happening in your case.

I suggest you to add "f" option to "ps" to see process tree. It may help 
to find details concerning starting of particular agent.

    ps xwwf

P.S. At certain moment gnome designers decided that password prompt must 
be a modal dialog completely blocking interaction with any other 
applications (including 3rd party password manager). For me it was 
another reason to avoid gnome. I am aware that X11 protocol allows to 
sniff keyboard events and a measure against it is grabbing input. 
However I believe mouse still may be a way to call an external password 
manager. After all, there are may be an option to temporary suspend 
keyboard grabbing. I learned about multiple ways to start a ssh agent 
during initialization of user session when I was trying to figure out 
which way GUI prompt is implemented and if a more flexible dialog could 
be used instead.

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Upgrade to Bookworm, now GNOME keyring dies--no access to stored SSH  key passwords Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2023-08-14 02:40 +0200
  Re: Upgrade to Bookworm, now GNOME keyring dies--no access to stored  SSH key passwords Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2023-08-15 04:30 +0200
    Re: Upgrade to Bookworm, now GNOME keyring dies--no access to stored  SSH key passwords Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2023-09-11 13:40 +0200
  Re: Upgrade to Bookworm, now GNOME keyring dies--no access to stored  SSH key passwords Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2024-02-19 20:30 +0100
    rec recording, Re: Upgrade to Bookworm, now GNOME keyring dies … David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-02-21 19:50 +0100
      Re: rec recording, Re: Upgrade to Bookworm, now GNOME keyring dies … Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2024-02-21 20:10 +0100

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