Principis/howdy

Maybe it is solved in the v.3.0, just wondering.

I finally got things to work with the extra lines from this comment: Howdy not working on lockscreen on Fedora 38 · Issue #804 · boltgolt/howdy · GitHub

I’d also suggest adding howdy PAM module to /etc/pam.d/polkit-1 to enable it for “Authentication Required” popups in GNOME.

Ok what a mess. :sweat_smile:

Howdy beta (3.0) is packaged here: principis/howdy-beta Copr

Please completely remove howdy and the non-beta repo before installing this version. You will have issues if you don’t!

If you have any issues related to packaging (missing dependencies, strange errors, …) please post them here, so I can fix them and maybe somewhere in the future include howdy in Fedora. :slight_smile:

Important:

  • For pam: pam_python is gone. You have to use /usr/lib64/security/pam_howdy.so

Thank you a ton! I was waiting this moment since months lol

I successfully unlocked using my face when i typed sudo, in terminal.

I also wanted to make sure lockscreen work, but the instruction in Howdy github and in your repo reference a folder /lib64/security/howdy/ which does not exist for me. In /lib64/security/ I only have a file with a .so extension.

In fact, on my GNOME lockscreen, it says: attemping face recognition but the IR camera is not blinking.

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You’re welcome. Sorry it had to wait so long.

The documentation I wrote should be correct for the most part, you just have to change pam_python.so /lib64/security/howdy/pam.py to pam_howdy.so. No path required :slightly_smiling_face: .

For example for pam.d/kde

#%PAM-1.0
auth       substack     system-auth
auth       sufficient   pam_howdy.so
auth       include      postlogin
account    required     pam_nologin.so
...

I can’t currently test it for you because I use KDE and time constraints, but it should be something like my example above.

I did that, still the camera does not turn on when on lockscreen. Also it does not turn on when I get the authentication request in popup to unlock keyring or sometimes it appears in terminal.

The usual sudo works

@principis

in which one should I add pam_howdy.so? I have already added in gdm-password and sddm. I have GNOME

Have someone succedeed in using Howdy to unlock the device from lockscreen? (F40 Gnome)

My apologies, busy semester and my email is a mess.

Before you do anything, make sure you are logged into a TTY, so if something goes wrong, you can fix it.

For Gnome, you should add it to gdm-password. It’s explained under Configure howdy for login (gdm). The guide could be better :sweat_smile:.

I’m running Fedora 40 KDE w/ Plasma 6.1, and I have this all set up and working thanks to your instructions. However, it only… half works on the actual login screen. Howdy won’t activate at all until after entering my password manually, then it lights up and attempts to look for my face. Any help would be appreciated!

Edit: It also doesn’t seem to catch “UI” requests for root, like when installing software through Discover, or giving KDE Wallet permissions. Not sure if that’s intentional or not.

I’m not sure, but you could try adding it to system-auth or something else, but as always be careful.

I believe it should be possible to get it working correctly. Maybe look at how fprintd is implemented. Make sure to not edit too much, for example the /etc/pam.d/kde file changed since I wrote that guide and currently looks like this on my system (without howdy)

auth        substack      password-auth
auth        include       postlogin

account     required      pam_nologin.so
account     include       password-auth

password    include       password-auth

session     required      pam_selinux.so close
session     required      pam_loginuid.so
session     required      pam_selinux.so open
session     optional      pam_keyinit.so force revoke
session     required      pam_namespace.so
session     include       password-auth
session     include       postlogin

I’m no longer able to install howdy from this repo. It keeps trying to install an older version that no longer exists. Trying to install the RPM directly also doesn’t work, as dependencies are missing as well.

Seems to work fine on Fedora 40. Which distro/version are you using? Note that Fedora 38 is EOL and will not be supported.

If you are on Fedora 39 or 40, try sudo dnf --refresh install howdy

I’m using Fedora 40 Kinoite. Tried it again today after I saw your response, and it’s working now. Was previously getting 404 errors, so whatever the issue was, it seems to have been fixed. Thank you for checking.

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Yesterday, Discover was trying to update several packages, and kept complaining about not being able to update Howdy. I updated howdy through dnf separately and then it was fine. I wonder if you were encountering a similar issue (which might have just been a repo issue that was resolved)

Probably a temporary issue, I rebuilt everything yesterday.

So decided to update my system to Fedora 40 (and on a Friday too, the hubris!) but I’m getting the attached error when attempting to test/configure howdy, can anyone advise?

howdy.why

Have removed and reinstalled already but to no avail, had a message from Discover about howdy before manually updating via dnf as earlier in this chain.

Thanks, found the issue. Sorry about that.

Edit: building right now, should be done soon. commit

Thanks for the switft response, forgot to update the thread but managed to get it working this morning by adding the line sys.path.append(‘/lib64/security/howdy’) to cli.py file per some thread I found while looking around for this issue.

Hopefully fixed moving forward anyway!

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