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Arseny Zinchenko
Arseny Zinchenko

Posted on • Originally published at rtfm.co.ua on

Linux: the Nextcloud client, qtkeychain and the “The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files” error

After installing Nextcloud (see the Nextcloud: running in Docker Compose on Debian with Let’s Encrypt SSL post), on the next day its client ton my Arch Linux asked for authentication.

But after I entered my credentials, it returned me the following error:

_ Reading from keychain failed with error: ‘The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files’ _

One of the first search results in Google was this>>> discussion where the first comment says:

Could be an upstream issue of the qtkeychain dependency frankosterfeld/qtkeychain#99, but I don’t have any KDE setup to test/debug this. Any help here is welcome.

Okay – we have a starting point now, let’s try to go deeper to investigate why this error happens.

What is the qtkeychain at all?

From its README on the Github:

QtKeychain is a Qt API to store passwords and other secret data securely.

I.e. this package intended to provide an API interface for Qt-based applications to be used to retrieve confidential information from an operating system.

But QtKeychain itself doesn’t store those credentials, instead – it translates those requests to some backend-storage, and this is described in the following lines in the same README::

  • Mac OS X: Passwords are stored in the OS X Keychain.
  • Linux/Unix: If running, GNOME Keyring is used, otherwise qtkeychain tries to use KWallet (via D-Bus), if available.

I.e. on a Linux qtkeychain will try to call GNOME Keyring or KWallet via D-Bus.

Now, using this tip – the D-Bus – let’s grab the qtkeychain source code to see how this is happening at all.

Download its repository and use the grep util with the dbus string:

[setevoy@setevoy-arch-work /tmp/qtkeychain] [master*] $ grep -r dbus . ./qt5keychain.pri: QT += dbus ./org.kde.KWallet.xml:<!DOCTYPE node PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD D-BUS Object Introspection 1.0//EN" "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/dbus/1.0/introspect.dtd"> ./keychain_unix.cpp: /* The secret service dbus api, accessible through libsecret, is supposed 

keychain_unix.cpp – well, self-explanatory file name, looks like what we are looking for.

Open it and look for the dbus word again – will see the detectKeyringBackend() – again self-explanatory name:

static KeyringBackend detectKeyringBackend() { /* The secret service dbus api, accessible through libsecret, is supposed * to unify password services. * * Unfortunately at the time of Kubuntu 18.04 the secret service backend * in KDE is gnome-keyring-daemon - using it has several complications: * - the default collection isn't opened on session start, so users need * to manually unlock it when the first application uses it * - it's separate from the kwallet5 keyring, so switching to it means the * existing keyring data can't be accessed anymore * * Thus we still prefer kwallet backends on KDE even if libsecret is * available. */ switch (detectDesktopEnvironment()) { case DesktopEnv_Kde4: return Backend_Kwallet4; case DesktopEnv_Plasma5: if (isKwallet5Available()) { return Backend_Kwallet5; } if (LibSecretKeyring::isAvailable()) { return Backend_LibSecretKeyring; } if (GnomeKeyring::isAvailable()) { return Backend_GnomeKeyring; } // During startup the keychain backend might just not have started yet return Backend_Kwallet5; case DesktopEnv_Gnome: case DesktopEnv_Unity: case DesktopEnv_Xfce: case DesktopEnv_Other: default: if (LibSecretKeyring::isAvailable()) { return Backend_LibSecretKeyring; } if (GnomeKeyring::isAvailable()) { return Backend_GnomeKeyring; } if (isKwallet5Available()) { return Backend_Kwallet5; } ... } 

There is also an interesting comment about kwallet vs gnome-keyring in the beginning, but for now, skip it.

So, then a backend initialization will be performed:

... static KeyringBackend getKeyringBackend() { static KeyringBackend backend = detectKeyringBackend(); return backend; } ... 

And then – an attempt to get some password:

... void ReadPasswordJobPrivate::scheduledStart() { switch ( getKeyringBackend() ) { case Backend_LibSecretKeyring: { if ( !LibSecretKeyring::findPassword(key, q->service(), this) ) { q->emitFinishedWithError( OtherError, tr("Unknown error") ); } } break; case Backend_GnomeKeyring: this->mode = JobPrivate::Text; if ( !GnomeKeyring::find_network_password( key.toUtf8().constData(), q->service().toUtf8().constData(), "plaintext", reinterpret_cast<GnomeKeyring::OperationGetStringCallback>( &JobPrivate::gnomeKeyring_readCb ), this, 0 ) ) q->emitFinishedWithError( OtherError, tr("Unknown error") ); break; case Backend_Kwallet4: kwalletReadPasswordScheduledStartImpl("org.kde.kwalletd", "/modules/kwalletd", this); break; case Backend_Kwallet5: kwalletReadPasswordScheduledStartImpl("org.kde.kwalletd5", "/modules/kwalletd5", this); break; } } ... 

In our case, the next condition will be applied will be used:

... case Backend_LibSecretKeyring: { if ( !LibSecretKeyring::findPassword(key, q->service(), this) ) { ... 

We can go deeper in the code, but now we got the main – the qtkeychain will issue a call to the libsecret.

We can deeper into the libsecret‘s code, but not this time. Let’s just find where libsecret will perform a call to the D-Bus using D-Bus API.

In the libsecret‘s repository grep by the dbus will rerun a lot of files – filet the search results with the -v:

[setevoy@setevoy-arch-work /tmp/libsecret] [master*] $ grep -r "/org/freedesktop/secrets" . | grep -v "test\|.py" ./tool/secret-tool.c:#define SECRET_ALIAS_PREFIX "/org/freedesktop/secrets/aliases/" ./libsecret/secret-util.c: return g_strdup_printf ("/org/freedesktop/secrets/aliases/%s", collection); ./libsecret/secret-private.h:#define SECRET_ALIAS_PREFIX "/org/freedesktop/secrets/aliases/" ./libsecret/secret-private.h:#define SECRET_SERVICE_PATH "/org/freedesktop/secrets" 

./tool/secret-tool.c:#define SECRET_ALIAS_PREFIX "/org/freedesktop/secrets/aliases/"“Alright, These Guys”!” (с)

So, what is going on here?

... case DesktopEnv_Other: default: if (LibSecretKeyring::isAvailable()) { return Backend_LibSecretKeyring; } ... 
  • qtkeychain will issue a call to the libsecret, which in its turn will try to call the D-Bus’s org.freedesktop.secrets, can not find it and returns the SECRET_ERROR_NO_SUCH_OBJECT error

But why it can not be found?

Check the D-Bus service files in the /usr/share/dbus-1/services/ directory:

$ ls -l /usr/share/dbus-1/services/ total 196 ... -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 107 Sep 10 21:53 org.a11y.Bus.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 95 Oct 31 12:09 org.bluez.obex.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 116 Oct 9 12:26 org.freedesktop.ColorHelper.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 104 Oct 27 16:08 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.AccountManager.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 194 Nov 5 12:19 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.Approver.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 91 Nov 5 12:21 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.CallUi.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 106 Nov 5 12:20 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.ConfAuthObserver.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117 Nov 5 12:26 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.FileTransferHandler.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 217 Nov 5 12:27 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.KdedIntegrationModule.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 88 Nov 12 10:26 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.Proxy.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 101 Nov 5 12:20 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.SASLHandler.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 91 Nov 5 12:29 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.TextUi.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 100 Nov 5 12:20 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.KTp.TLSHandler.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 102 Nov 10 2018 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.Logger.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 84 Sep 12 2018 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.Vinagre.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 95 Nov 10 2018 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Logger.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 188 Oct 27 16:08 org.freedesktop.Telepathy.MissionControl5.service -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 60 Oct 27 2018 org.gnome.GConf.service ... 

And recall the error text – – The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files’: we can not see the org.freedesktop.secrets.service file in the directory above.

The solution

First, check if the qtkeychain installed:

[setevoy@setevoy-arch-work ~] $ pacman -Qi | grep qtkeychain Optional For : chromium qtkeychain Optional For : git qtkeychain Depends On : qtkeychain qt5-webkit hicolor-icon-theme xdg-utils Required By : appstream-qt... Name : qtkeychain URL : https://github.com/frankosterfeld/qtkeychain 

Yes. Actually, it is set as the dependency for the nextcloud-client, thus pacman installed it together with the client.

Now, what we need is just to install some package which will provide us the org.freedesktop.secrets service.

Install the gnome-keyring:

[setevoy@setevoy-arch-work /tmp/qtkeychain] [master*] $ sudo pacman -S gnome-keyring 

Check D-Bus services again:

[setevoy@setevoy-arch-work /tmp/qtkeychain] [master*] $ ls -l /usr/share/dbus-1/services/ | grep secret -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 122 Oct 29 11:38 org.freedesktop.secrets.service 

And check the service’s file content:

[setevoy@setevoy-arch-work /tmp/qtkeychain] [master*] $ cat /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.secrets.service [D-BUS Service] Name=org.freedesktop.secrets Exec=/usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --start --foreground --components=secrets 

Repeat log in to the Nextcloud.

Done.

P.S. There is a good story about Chrome/Chromium and how they are working with backend storages, I’ll add another post about it.

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