Howdy not working on gnome

[Ficles]

I’m pretty new to linux overall and very new to arch/endeavourOS and can’t figure out why howdy isn’t working.

I have installed howdy and when I run “sudo howdy test” It detects my face and identifies me. But the problem is it doesn’t activate on the login screen. It only shows the option for password and my camera doesn’t activate. I am using gnome so I added
auth sufficient pam_unix.so try_first_pass likeauth nullok
auth sufficient /lib/security/pam_howdy.so
to the top of the “etc/pam.d/gdm-password” file. Maybe this is the wrong file?

Can someone help me out please.

EDIT: I solved my problem I just need to press enter with an empty password and it works. Does anyone have a way for it work without pressing enter?

[BluishHumility]

Hi @Ficles, welcome to the community.

It sounds like you solved your issue already, but what I was going to say is someone wrote up a guide a while back that may be useful if you need a hand getting this set up.

[Tutorial] Installing Howdy: Now it's personal

After a long time and thanks to trial and error I managed to get Howdy working on EndeavourOS and you can too! Step 1: Howdy AUR. Just install the Howdy’s AUR package the way you want, in my case I install it with pamac. Step 2: Identify which is your login manager. In my case I use KDE so I have Sddm, but in your case you may use LightDM, xcreenaver, sudo, etc. Step 3: Pam.py files. The next step and the most confusing is the Pam files, on the github page it says that you shou…

[Ficles]

This is the guide I followed C:

[BluishHumility]

Oh gotcha, well in that case another resource that may be useful is here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Howdy

It looks like the line you have is specified at the bottom of this section:

Setup Howdy to start when needed

In order for Howdy to authenticate a user, a small change must be added to any PAM configuration file where Howdy might want to be used. The following line must be added to any configuration file:

auth sufficient pam_python.so /lib/security/howdy/pam.py

Note: When using Howdy 3.0.0 BETA and above (howdy-beta-gitAUR), the line should be:

auth sufficient /lib/security/pam_howdy.so

Adding howdy/pam.py (or pam_howdy.so) as sufficient to any configuration file in /etc/pam.d/ will only prompt for face authentication. This prevents the use of a password if you cannot Ctrl+c face authentication (due to the lack of a shell). In order to use either a password or a face in a graphical interface, add the following line to the top of any files required:

auth sufficient pam_unix.so try_first_pass likeauth nullok

From what I understand, that line is optional. You could eliminate that behavior (asking for the password in addition to the face) by removing the line, although that would be up to you if it is worth it or not. You may need to do some testing to see if you are able to break out of the face authentication and use a password if Howdy wasn’t working right or something.

Be careful messing around with PAM files; most people (even advanced users) do not really know how PAM config files work. It is easy to make an oopsie that will require mounting the disk from the live environment to undo. Be sure to stick to the documentation as closely as you can for any changes you want to try.

[manuel]

@Ficles

I solved my problem I just need to press enter with an empty password and it works. Does anyone have a way for it work without pressing enter?

Does simple echoing help?

echo | 'the-howdy-program'

And if you need more than one newline, see

man echo

[Pikaloid]

I’m very glad that the guide was useful to you!