"Authentication required" keeps popping up

Hardware Librem 5
1

I couldn’t find a post about this so here I am.

When I enter my disk password when starting up the L5 I get the little numbers on the top of the keyboard to do this. It then does its thing and then I have to input the password again but this time with the bigger number only keypad. This has always been the case so no problem. But now, after this second step I get another “Authentication required” box which asks me to again input the password with the smaller numbers as per the first ask when booting up. This has appeared out of the blue as I have not installed anything on the phone. This same box will also appear if the phone has been idle in that I have to put in the password on the bigger keypad when asked and then this smaller box appears again.

This is annoying and seemingly not necessary, but I’m not sure. Is there any way to get rid of this repeated asking for my password?

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2

What are you talking about? We have:

  1. LUKS on boot (disc decryption of main storage)
  2. PIN as on any mobile phone (same password as sudo commands)
  3. PIN of your SIM-card → one time per boot
  4. passwords for different apps (keyring)
  5. LUKS for other discs as MicroSD

Did I forget something? Depending on what you’re asking for the answer will be different.

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3

Pictures may be worth a thousand words.

When booting up, I get the following:

  • a keyboard that is not the normal on-screen keyboard but looks basically comparable, with digits and letters and the entry field is labelled “Enter disk encryption passphrase” - which I proceed to do
  • then I get a message briefly “cryptsetup … set up successfully”
  • then it asks me to “Slide up to unlock” - which I do
  • then it gives a numeric pad to enter the unlock PIN - which I do and then touch Unlock (the unlock PIN is actually the system password for the purism username)
  • then it will ask for a SIM PIN - but this won’t appear if you haven’t set a PIN on your SIM, I would guess

“Authentication required” would be indicative of something wanting to open a keyring, I think. You will get that if an application is started at startup (login) and the application needs information that is held in a keyring (typically a password) - or if you manually launch an application and it needs information from a keyring. Unfortunately, that dialog box does not tell you which application is asking - but it does at least tell you which keyring.

Note that a GNOME system can have more than one keyring and each keyring has a name.

My guess is that the answer is to audit what applications you have installed, and whether they use a keyring, and whether they are working.

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4

Thanks for taking the time to decipher what I wrote. What I am talking about is this process as listed above:

When booting up, I get the following:

** a keyboard that is not the normal on-screen keyboard but looks basically comparable, with digits and letters and the entry field is labelled “Enter disk encryption passphrase” - which I proceed to do*
** then I get a message briefly “cryptsetup … set up successfully”*
** then it asks me to “Slide up to unlock” - which I do*
** then it gives a numeric pad to enter the unlock PIN - which I do and then touch Unlock (the unlock PIN is actually the system password for the purism username)*

Then following this I get a small box that just says “Authentication required”. And yes, it does remind me of the Gnome keyring I think back when I used that system. I can cancel this box and things seem to work ok, but it will reappear after the phone has been sitting and I want to use it.

I’m not in a position to take pics which I know would help. I hope that clarifies somewhat.

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5

From your description, this appears to be gnome keyring. Usually the gnome keyring is unlocked when you login if both passwords are same. Did you change your password recently? I think if you change login password, the gnome keyring password may not be changed to the same value.

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6

Not on the Librem 5 though - at least not in the early software versions - it may eventually get fixed (or it may already have been fixed for all I know).

Note that the behaviour is specific to the login keyring. Other keyrings will only unlock on login if the keyring passwords for the other keyrings are stored in the login keyring. So you can, if you want, have a cascade of unlocks (although I don’t recommend that).

It’s certainly something to check - but only after identifying which keyring is being unlocked.

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7

Sounds like an issue I recently started having with OpenVPN continuously asking for my Librem Tunnel password. Do you automatically start a VPN connection when your phone connects to your network?

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