Allow normal password entry at the same time as face recognition about howdy HOT 12 CLOSED

Enabling password entry at the same time as face recognition is becoming mandatory as authentication is not a priority of security rather an issue of urgency. If I really need access I can't wait for the camera to detect me. It's a make or break feature.

from howdy.

@boltgolt With your hesitation to use C++ maybe we could try using a different low-end language? There are several alternatives that would perform just as fast (if not faster) than plain old C++ (specifically Rust and Go come to mind).

from howdy.

Closed by #484.

from howdy.

I've found a doc from the fingerprint-gui module that explains how they got this principle to work.

from howdy.

If I unterstand well from case 4, typing password should stop face_detection module (if not other modules are working).

Case 4 (user has typed the password)
If the PAM module returns from its password prompt with a non empty password field the user has typed his password at the prompt. Then the module sends SIGUSR2 to the helper to stop it immediately and returns PAM_IGNORE. So the other PAM modules can check the given username/password.

from howdy.

That's what I tried to do in python, but I ran into 2 issues:

First of all, the call to the PAM conversation is interpreter-blocking. This means that when we promt for a password nothing else can run. Even separate threads will freeze.

Secondly, I can't get the PAM_IGNORE signal to pass the captured password to the other PAM modules. It's doing the exact same thing as fingerprint-gui (I've run though the source) but it just falls through to a second password prompt.

from howdy.

@boltgolt did you tried contact linux-pam developers about this issue?

from howdy.

I haven't, and looking at the issues page of the project it doesn't seem very active. I was working on removing the dependency in it's entirety and writing the PAM part in C++. However, i'm not that comfortable in C++ so that's on hold for now.

from howdy.

it doesn't seem very active

Indeed: https://sourceforge.net/p/pam-python/code/ci/19f932b71918cbcd639a26bef79e2de0c3d9d5c4/log/?path=

Maybe try this one?

https://github.com/minrk/pamela

from howdy.

sourceforge project seems dead, but here is some activity: https://github.com/Ralnoc/pam-python

from howdy.

Any progress on this? I thought Howdy was always asynchronous like this, but if it isn't, then I don't know if it's compatible with my (or @papermache's) workflow.

from howdy.

You could try the beta right now and see if it works as you would expect

from howdy.