Bug 449577

Summary: Howdy does not work with KScreenLocker (permissions issue)
Product: [Plasma] kscreenlocker Reporter: Iyán Méndez Veiga <me>
Component: kcheckpassAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM    
Severity: normal CC: aleixpol, bhush94, kde, nate
Priority: NOR    
Version: 5.24.4   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Iyán Méndez Veiga 2022-02-03 22:34:46 UTC 
SUMMARY

Howdy stop working properly (around end of December for me) with KScreenLocker. At the beginning, I thought it was an issue caused by the Python 3.9 -> 3.10 update, but today I found this issue:

https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy/issues/551

Where it has been suggested that is a KScreenLocker issue. I open this issue so maybe you can have a look. I can confirm that howdy works just fine with other applications (e.g. sudo, Polkit KDE Agent, etc.) and it works with KScreenLocker with the following workaround:

sudo chmod u+s /usr/lib/kcheckpass

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

1. Install and configure howdy
2. Lock the screen
3. Press enter on the password field without writing anything

OBSERVED RESULT
Howdy does not work and some entries like this one are added to the journal:
/lib/security/howdy/pam.py[1992]: Can not open module: Permission denied

EXPECTED RESULT


SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.90
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.90.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.16.5-arch1-1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
Memory: 15.4 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® Xe Graphics
Comment 1 David Edmundson 2022-04-08 09:11:19 UTC 
kscreenlocker runs authentication as the current logged in user. 

Your comments imply howdy requires root. It's howdy's job to abstract that in the same way pam_unix does.
Comment 2 Iyán Méndez Veiga 2022-04-08 09:14:51 UTC 
In the howdy open issue they imply that this is a KScreenLocker bug, here that is a howdy bug. Maybe you can give your arguments in the issue upstream?