F38: yubioath-desktop will no longer be available in Fedora Repository

yubioath-desktop will not be available in the F38 Fedora repository. This is due to dependency issues with the current release of yubikey-manager (ykman).

yubioath-desktop
Upstream has created a replacement package for yubioath-desktop named yubico-authenticator. This package cannot be packaged for Fedora because:

  1. The package is flutter based and flutter is not yet available in Fedora
  2. It appears that the way the package was created and bundled that it would violate current packaging guidelines

Several Different Mitigation paths are available

  • Supported in Fedora: Install today ykocli. This package is a TUI application which will mimic the functionality that was provided by yubioath-desktop. Please report any issues, bugs, etc. via bugzilla so they may be quickly addressed.

  • Supported Upstream: Install the new flutter based yubico-authenticator appimage directly from the yubico website.

To install:

  1. Download the linux archive
  2. cd $home
  3. tar -xvf yubico-authenticator-6.x.x-linux.tar.gz
  4. cd yubico-authenticator-6.x.x-linux
  5. ./desktop_integration.sh -i

You should now be able to launch the application from your Application menu

To uninstall:

  1. cd ~/yubico-authenticator-6.x.x-linux/
  2. ./desktop_integration.sh -u
  3. rm ~/yubico-authenticator-6.x.x-linux/ --recursive
  • Unsupported: Install the legacy version of yubioath-desktop from COPR. The legacy versions are working now, but since upstream no longer provides support, they may fail at anytime due to bugs, python upgrades, etc.
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@bcotton Ben, can you help me or direct me to who can get this incorporated in the F38 release notes. I don’t believe it is necessary or even desired to include the whole notice verbatim. Maybe something like:

yubioath-desktop and yubikey-manager-qt will not be included in the F38 repository due to packaging issues. For additional information and suggested mitigations, please review: F38: yubioath-desktop will no longer be available in Fedora Repository

or maybe it’s not really required and this notice is sufficient. Just trying to cover my bases and give people advance notice.

We have recently added a Yubikeys article to QuickDocs: “Using Yubikeys with Fedora” . Wouldn’t it be useful to add this information to the article? Unfortunately, while I published the article, I don’t know anything about Yubikey, but just did the move from Wiki to docs (as kind of editor in charge). So it would be helpful, if you would provide quite detailed sugestions. :slight_smile:

And of course, we still need someone who does a review of the article :blush:

And regarding the release notes, is there a change proposal? I didn’t notice, but maybe I missed it. Then it’s easy.

I took a quick look at the article and it looked good. I’ll go back and review in detail and comment as appropriate.

I don’t believe this information belongs in that doc. This is more of a heads-up to people who may be using the aforementioned apps to be aware of the changes from upstream that is affecting their availabilty in the Fedora repositories. That said, yubikey-manager and yubikey-manager-qt are mentioned. AFAIK yubikey-manager isn’t going anywhere, but yubikey-manager-qt is debatable at the moment. I’d leave it in for now, at least until we see how everything settles, but I wouldn’t count on a current version being in F38.

No, there isn’t a change proposal. This is a result of an upstream packaging change that broke a dependency. As was pointed out in the doc link you sent me, yubikey-manager (ykman) is really the app that provides all the functionality. yubioath-desktop and yubikey-manager-qt are basically just optional GUI interfaces to ykman.

Open an issue in the release-notes repo.

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@bcotton Will do, thanks!

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I was considering posting about this issue on the Mastodon account to make more folks aware that this is coming but also to see if we can get the support needed to maintain this. Is posting about it something we would like to do, or would it be better to just leave it alone?

@joseph It couldn’t hurt to post something like:

yubioath-desktop and potentially yubikey-manager-qt will not be included in the F38
repository due to packaging issues. For additional information and suggested mitigations,
please review: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f38-yubioath-desktop-yubikey-manager-qt-will-no-longer-be-available-in-fedora-repository/45921

That is the same language I used to post to the devel and user mailing lists. I prefer to keep all discussion, updates, etc. in one location and Discourse allows for easy edits, etc.

These types of things happen all the time, packages come and go, upstream sometimes makes decisions that don’t agree with Fedora Guidelines, etc. The mitigation options are solid, so people aren’t going to be left in the lurch. I’ve received feedback on ykocli and made several suggested modifications. The upstream provided appimage is also a good option. I would caution against using the COPR versions. They do work (for the time being), but they are intended only as a fail-safe.

Updated posting to reflect that yubikey-manager-qt has been updated to be compatible with ykman 5.0 and will be available in F38. yubikey-manager-qt 1.2.5 is available

Ok, glad to hear this was resolved!