Bug 486973

Summary:	Unable to remember password for custom prompt
Product:	[Applications] ksshaskpass	Reporter:	joelsgp <joelsgp>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Jeremy Whiting <jpwhiting>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	avg, krystof, lysfjord.daniel+bugs.kde.org, me
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	6.0.4
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Arch Linux
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	patch to catch kbdinteractive Add support for FreeBSD and openssh kbdinteractive

Description joelsgp@protonmail.com 2024-05-13 15:53:06 UTC

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***

SUMMARY
The usual prompt by sshd is like this:
"user@host's password:"
For some reason, a major compute cluster at my university has a custom prompt like this:
"(user@host) Password:"

So I get a message like this:
"ksshaskpass: Unable to parse phrase "(jm3017@viking.york.ac.uk) Password: ""
and it doesn't save the password.

To fix this would it be possible to have a config file where I can put in a regex format string for the prompt, or could the program default to saving the exact string if it can't parse it?

I don't know how or why this server has the prompt that it does.
If it helps, the server is running "Flight Direct r2023.1 Based on Rocky Linux 8.9".

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Visit a server with a custom password prompt
2. Enter a password and select save password
3. Logoff and connect again

OBSERVED RESULT
Password isn't saved

EXPECTED RESULT
Password is saved


SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: 
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 6.0-2
KDE Frameworks Version: 
Qt Version: 6.7.0-6

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Comment 1 Andriy Gapon 2025-07-24 08:19:53 UTC

I can confirm that this is still an issue in ksshaskpass-6.4.2.
Custom password prompts are not that rare.

Comment 2 Katalin Rebhan 2025-09-29 16:18:00 UTC

> For some reason, a major compute cluster at my university has a custom prompt like this:
> "(user@host) Password:"

This is *not* a custom prompt, far from it, this is indeed the default password prompt for openssh's keyboard-interactive auth method. It's the one that's used with the stock sshd config!

Comment 3 krystof 2025-09-30 13:55:04 UTC

I had the same problem and with help from other people I found the problem is that the ksshaskpass dosent support the keyboard interactive prompt format which is on some distributions like debian disabled (https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/openssh-server/sshd_config.5.en.html). So the solution to fix it is simply to disable the KbdInteractiveAuthentication option.

Comment 4 Daniel Lysfjord 2025-10-25 18:27:17 UTC

Created attachment 186146 [details]
patch to catch kbdinteractive

I grew tired of the lack of support for kbdinteractive, so, here's a patch.

Comment 5 Daniel Lysfjord 2025-10-25 18:51:42 UTC

Created attachment 186148 [details]
Add support for FreeBSD and openssh kbdinteractive

FreeBSD adds a space on the end of the prompt. Update patch to support both with and without space on the end..