I am using pass to manage my passwords, and I also use the [passmenu](https://git.zx2c4.com/password-store/tree/contrib/dmenu/passmenu) , a script that uses dmenu to select which password you want to copy to the clipboard. Now on my Linux machine running Gnome , upon selecting a password from the passmenu a full screen authentication overlay (Pinentry?) appears asking for the master password. Please correct me if this is not pinentry It looks like this: On my NetBSD machine however, using only a stand alone WM, I am unable to authenticate pass when launched from passmenu as no pinentry is triggered. When launched from within a terminal however with pass -c github.com for example, you get this: Essentially passmenu is useless if I cant authenticate it. Therefore my question is, would it be possible to use passmenu to spawn this pinentry program/event in an xterm ?

gnome-keyring and systemd black-magic 😉 EDIT: If you really want this... $ pkgin search gnome | grep keyring gnome-keyring-2.32.1nb30 GNOME password and secret manager gnome-keyring-manager-2.20.0nb49 GNOME password and secret manager libgnome-keyring-3.12.0nb1 GNOME password and secret manager if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } Also, you'll need polkit running. $ doas pkgin install gnome-keyring gnome-keyring-manager Password: calculating dependencies...done. 30 packages to install: gnome-keyring-2.32.1nb30 gnome-keyring-manager-2.20.0nb49 gtk2+-2.24.32nb16 rarian-0.8.1nb5 libgnomeui-2.24.5nb51 libglade-2.6.4nb35 GConf-3.2.3nb6 python27-2.7.18nb3 py27-expat-2.7.18 dbus-glib-0.110nb1 ORBit2-2.14.19nb5 popt-1.18 libgnomecanvas-2.30.3nb29 libgnome-keyring-3.12.0nb1 libgnome-2.32.1nb40 libbonoboui-2.24.5nb2 gnome-vfs-2.24.4nb44 getopt-1.1.6 bash-5.0.18 hal-0.5.14nb24 libcanberra-0.30nb4 libbonobo-2.32.1nb2 libart-2.3.21 libIDL-0.8.14nb5 libltdl-2.4.6 usbids-20200622 policykit-0.9nb25 pciids-20200222 libvolume_id-0.81.1nb1 hal-info-20091130nb8 0 to refresh, 0 to upgrade, 30 to install 29M to download, 206M to install proceed ? [Y/n] n if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); }

pin black-magic Nay, Sir @pin , it be deep black magic this. Verily I could not have perform'd this feat (or maybe, it would have taken me many a day to accomplish)--but you have solved it in an instant!

pin Well, no, I dont want gnome-keyring installed... 😅 What I want, is to trigger the existing authentication program (whatever its called) used when running pass -c in a terminal. Although I am not clever enough to figure out how, I would imagine that with some scripting knowledge this should be possible?

pfr You can use a keybinding in your spectrwm.conf to spawn an xterm instance and execute the command 😉 What about something like xterm -e "command_to_execute"

pin Yes, but that would only be useful for individual passwords.. That's why I want it to work with passmenu . I have more passwords than I could remember the bindings for 😅

pfr But how do you launch passmenu ?

@pfr Maybe I was wrong... https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pass https://pkgsrc.se/search.php?stype=folder&sbranch=CURRENT&so=pinentry https://superuser.com/questions/520980/how-to-force-gpg-to-use-console-mode-pinentry-to-prompt-for-passwords Now I see what you're looking for, ...I guess.

If pass needs a terminal to take input from, just modify passmenu.sh to run pass via xterm -e program , like @pin suggested.

Opening pinentry in xterm from passmenu(dmenu)

rvp

Note: Edited for clarification

pfr And would this go in ~/.profile rather than my ~/.shrc

The other way around. ~/.profile is only executed if the shell is a login shell; the other one is executed by any interactive shell. So, you want the latter (whose name depends on the shell--see specific man pages) to set GPG_TTY.

pfr EDIT: It works without doing this

Yes, it would. Since the pass command is running inside xterm, it (or whatever gpg program it calls) can get the pseudo-tty name it is running in by just running tty(1) if GPG_TTY is unset.

pfr however is there any other reason I should do this?

It's a default backup, but, you could use it--with major caveats--to run pass the way you were trying to originally ie. without an xterm. This failed because no xterm means no tty to do I/O to. But, you can, say, do I/O to some other terminal instead. Try it out yourself. Open multiple xterms; run tty in each window; then, in a separate window type:

GPG_TTY=/dev/pts/N gpg-connect-agent "GET_PASSPHRASE X X X Password+please" /bye

Replace N with tty-number of the pseudo-ttys you noted earlier.

pfr Is it possible to launch an xterm and actually specify a custom WM_CLASS(STRING) ?

If you're talking about the X property WM_CLASS, then yes. Use xprop to set properties.

pin Yes, but it will affect all launched instances.

xterm has a -name option to set a custom name. I don't know what it is that you guys are trying to do with X properties, but, you can use that as a basis to identify specific xterm windows.

rvp I don't know what it is that you guys are trying to do with X properties

Don't worry, the quirks are a spectrwm thing used to assign windows behaviour based on WM_CLASS(STRING).

pfr

EDIT: comment deleted.
I've got to go to bed, but I'll be looking into this tomorrow.
Cheers again.

pfr brb

???

pfr

@pin "Be right back"

Ok just quickly..
I added this to my .spectrwm.conf
quirk[Pinentry:xterm] = FLOAT + FOCUSPREV

Then launch xterm -geometry 75x15 -class Pinentry which launches xterm at the specified geometry, floating in the center of the screen and gives me WM_CLASS(STRING) = "xterm", "Pinentry"

So that works, I get an xterm with the custom WM_CLASS, floating in the centre at the specified geometry.

Now I just need to incorprate the GPG_TTY=/dev/pts/2 gpg-connect-agent "GET_PASSPHRASE X X X Password+please" /bye

While this command runs after running tty within this new terminal, when I try to run xterm -geometry 75x15 -class Pinentry -e GPG_TTY=/dev/pts/2 gpg-connect-agent "GET_PASSPHRASE X X X Password+please" /bye I get xterm: Can't execvp GPG_TTY=/dev/pts/2: No such file or directory even after I have placed export GPG_TTY=$(tty) in my .shrc

Am I getting closer?

EDIT: Ok bed time, speak to you all tomorrow 😴

rvp

pfr While this command runs after running tty within this new terminal, when I try to run xterm -geometry 75x15 -class Pinentry -e GPG_TTY=/dev/pts/2 gpg-connect-agent "GET_PASSPHRASE X X X Password+please" /bye I get xterm: Can't execvp GPG_TTY=/dev/pts/2: No such file or directory even after I have placed export GPG_TTY=$(tty) in my .shrc

Ah. no, no no. This is all wrong. That gpg-connect-agent cmdline was meant as a demo of how pass is doing pinentry internally. If you run gpg-connect-agent on your own, you'll be acting like the password manager (instead of pass), which is useless. Plus, there is the problem of doing I/O to a terminal which might already be running something which is actively doing I/O already. A little explanation of how this pinentry thing works might help, I think.

But, first things first:

With xterm -e cmd args... the first item cmd, must be an executable file; it cannot be anything else.
If the cmd args contains a) environment variables, b) redirections, c) quoted strings, and any other shell stuff, then put all of that into a shell script and run this script with xterm -e script.sh. xterm -e does not parse shell constructs--simple commands and arguments only with the -e flag.

Pinentry:
We'll start with how this command works:

gpg-connect-agent "GET_PASSPHRASE X X X Password+please" /bye

Program runs, then tries to connect to a running gpg-agent over a UNIX socket. If this fails, it launches gpg-agent itself.
Connects to gpg-agent and tells it what ttyname to use for pinentry via the option command: OPTION ttyname=/dev/pts/3. If $GPG_TTY is set, gpg-connect-agent uses that, else it calls ttyname(3) to find the terminal name.
Sends a GET_PASSPHRASE X X X Password+please command to gpg-agent.
gpg-agent understands that a password need to be asked from the user.
It launches some pinentry program as its UI (it is just a daemon running headless in the background, after all), then sends it a GETPIN command.
Assuming the pinentry run is pinentry-curses, it retrieves the options it needs from the gpg-agent server--which includes ttyname set by gpg-connect-agent; and sees a GETPIN command.
So, it opens, let's say, /dev/pts/3, as in the example, above, for I/O; puts out a dialog; reads the PIN, converts each char. to hex and send it back to gpg-agent and exits.
gpg-agent reads the hex values from pinentry-curses and passes it along to gpg-agent-connect as the response to `GET_PASSPHRASE ...".
gpg-connect-agent prints hex back at the user who has to make sense of it.

Now you should be able to see why your running a GET_PASSPHRASE on your own is useless. It is the pass program which should send it to retrieve a PIN to decrypt its database with.

Then there is the problem of pinentry-curses doing I/O to some terminal which might already be running a program doing character-by-character I/O. Now both programs will fight for input, with unpredictable results. You can see it yourself if you run the commands I gave in my previous post, and if the shell you run in those windows does command-line editing. Then run the same GPG_TTY=... gpg-connect-agent ... commands after running a cat on each of them. See the difference?

The GPG_TTY environment variable is a default backup. You can use it on an arbitrary terminal, if you are certain that it is not doing active I/O (by active I/O, I mean the terminal has been put into either raw or cbreak mode to get input character-by-character, as they come in--like an editor would use it. The default, line mode, is OK. After all, gpg-connect-agent itself has the same terminal open for I/O, right?

rvp

pin the quirks are a spectrwm thing used to assign windows behaviour based on WM_CLASS(STRING).

If you just want to centre the xterm window, why not just use the -geometry flag itself? Or, don't tiling window managers honour client set position requests?

$ export MAXX=1366 MAXY=768 WINX=804 WINY=504
$ xterm -fn 10x20 -fg Ivory -bg Black -g 80x25-$(( (MAXX-WINX)/2 ))-$(( (MAXY-WINY)/2 ))

Use xwininfo(1) to get xterm window size; and set MAXX, MAXY correctly.

kamil

Not sure if this is on topic, but I heavily use xclip. I do cat file | xclip -i and I can paste that code with my middle mouse button click. xclip is in pkgsrc.

For passwords I use pinentry gtk.

I add the following code into ~/.shrc (I use ksh).

case "$-" in *i*)
# interactive mode settings go here
eval "$(gpg-agent --daemon --enable-ssh-support 2>/dev/null)"
export GPG_AGENT_INFO  # the env file does not contain the export statement
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK   # enable gpg-agent for ssh
;;

Whenever I need to pass my password in thunderbird, a window pops up. I use it with enigmal.

pfr

rvp Yes, I understand that running the command myself wont do anything but display a term with pinentry-curses. I was just playing around first of all to see if I could get spectrwm to recognise the different WM_CLASS and abide by the rules set in quirks (which it does) so I could edit the passmenu.sh as you mentioned above.

rvp The xterm -e "command" should include the entire command line--pipes and all. Better, here, to create a separate shell script with the pass ... | xdotool ... in it and run that instead with xterm -e myscript.sh

This is what I'm aiming for. But I just need to understand exactly what I need to put into myscript.sh and how to edit the passmenu.sh to then point to myscript.sh for it all to work together.

I assume then I could simply call xterm -e myscript.sh -class Pinentry -geometry 75x15 inside passmenu.sh ?

rvp You can use it on an arbitrary terminal, if you are certain that it is not doing active I/O (by active I/O, I mean the terminal has been put into either raw or cbreak mode to get input character-by-character, as they come in--like an editor would use it. The default, line mode, is OK. After all, gpg-connect-agent itself has the same terminal open for I/O, right?

I'll admit, a lot of what you wrote in your last comment went over my head. I appreciate the effort, and I am trying to make sense of it all. I understand why this is more complex than a simple edit of the passmenu.sh script, but I'm still unsure if you are telling me what I want is possible or not ?

rvp

pfr I was just playing around first of all to see if I could

it was a test, then? Fine.

pfr I assume then I could simply call xterm -e myscript.sh -class Pinentry -geometry 75x15 inside passmenu.sh?

Yes. Or, better: xterm XTERM_OPTIONS -e /SOME/PATH/passmenu.sh PASSMENU_OPTIONS. This way no change is needed to passmenu.sh.

pfr I'll admit, a lot of what you wrote in your last comment went over my head.

Don't worry, this won't be on the exam.

rvp Don't worry, this won't be on the exam.

🤣

pfr

EDIT: I'll revisit this when I'm sober 😉

rvp If you just want to centre the xterm window, why not just use the -geometry flag itself?

If you define it as floating, otherwise it will be tiled by default.

EDIT: Actually, this is exactly what quirks on spectrwm are used for.
See for example this one from @pfr config,

program[feh]		= feh -g 700x393 --scale-down
quirk[feh:feh]		= FLOAT

Obviously, this depends on the WM as well.
I no longer use spectrwm, moved to frankenwm about a month ago. On frankenwm this is defined in config.def.h and must be edited and defined at compile time.

EDIT 2: I also use awesomewm on another machine, in this case, floating clients are defined in rc.lua, example

-- Floating clients.
    { rule_any = {
        instance = {
          "DTA",  -- Firefox addon DownThemAll.
          "copyq",  -- Includes session name in class.
        },
        class = {
          "Galculator",
	  "mpv"},

        name = {
          "Event Tester",  -- xev.
        },
        role = {
          "AlarmWindow",  -- Thunderbird's calendar.
          "pop-up",       -- e.g. Google Chrome's (detached) Developer Tools.
        }
      }, properties = { floating = true }},

rvp

pin I see. But, without float will these tiling WMs honour client set size settings? Or, will they disregard those as well, and just fit the client window into a free tile somewhere?

pfr

OT...

program[feh]		= feh -g 700x393 --scale-down
quirk[feh:feh]		= FLOAT

As it turns out, the geometry is not set using quirks and this setting is actually useless... launching feh someimage.png will FLOAT but will not adhere to any of the other arguments.
I have had to set up aliases in my .shrc eg. alias view="feh -g 700x393 --scale-down" instead.

rvp Probably some minor syntax issue somewhere. Post your WM's config file (relevant bits only) and passmenu.sh as they are now.

Ok will do later tonight. Thanks.

pfr

rvp
Yes, without defining FLOAT based on WM_CLASS all windows will be tiled and and -geometry settings get ignored.

I've set these settings in my .Xresources

! Passmenu Pinentry
Pinentry*faceName: xft:Pragmata:pixelsize=10
Pinentry*internalBorder: 7
Pinentry*geometry: 78x15

As well as setting quirk[Pinentry:xterm] = FLOAT + FOCUSPREV in my .spectrwm.conf. So I just have to give xterm a class flag eg xterm -class Pinentry and it'll be centred, floating and now with the geometry and font set in .Xresources

While this works and gives me the UI behavior I want, it still doesn't actually copy my passwords to the clipboard. I've re-read your comment above @rvp and although I am starting to understand why it isn't working I still cant decide if It's possible or if I should give up on this.

rvp Just to follow-up on what @pfr just said.
One image, ...you know 😉

Geometries are ignored, that's part of the features of tiling WM's.
You might consider this wrong but, it was one of the reasons I started using tiling WM's some years ago

rvp

pfr it still doesn't actually copy my passwords to the clipboard.

Probably some minor syntax issue somewhere. Post your WM's config file (relevant bits only) and passmenu.sh as they are now.

pin Geometries are ignored, that's part of the features of tiling WM's.

Makes sense--ignore geometries and choose some strategy (with multiple selectable variations) to arrange how windows are tiled; provide an escape hatch using a FLOAT. If I were writing a tiling WM, I would do the same.

pfr

rvp post your WM's config file (relevant bits only) and passmenu.sh as they are now.

The only relevant lines from my ~/.spectrwm.conf

program[passmenu]       = ~/.config/spectrwm/./passmenu.sh $dmenu_bottom -fn $bar_font -nb $bar_color -nf $bar_font_color -sb $bar_color_selected -sf $bar_font_color_selected
bind[passmenu]          = MOD+Shift+p
...
quirk[Pinentry:xterm]   = FLOAT + FOCUSPREV

The pass menu script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
 
shopt -s nullglob globstar
 
typeit=0
if [[ $1 == "--type" ]]; then
        typeit=1
        shift
fi

prefix=${PASSWORD_STORE_DIR-~/.password-store}
password_files=( "$prefix"/**/*.gpg )
password_files=( "${password_files[@]#"$prefix"/}" )
password_files=( "${password_files[@]%.gpg}" )

password=$(printf '%s\n' "${password_files[@]}" | dmenu "$@")

[[ -n $password ]] || exit

if [[ $typeit -eq 0 ]]; then
        xterm -class Pinentry -e pass show -c "$password" 2>/dev/null
else
        pass show "$password" | { IFS= read -r pass; printf %s "$pass"; } |
                xdotool type --clearmodifiers --file -
fi

And of course in my ~/.Xresources

! Passmenu Pinentry
Pinentry*faceName: xft:Pragmata:pixelsize=10
Pinentry*internalBorder: 7
Pinentry*geometry: 78x15

pfr As it turns out, the geometry is not set using quirks and this setting is actually useless

Your config 😉
When I was using spectrwm, I'd assign a quirk simply to make the window floating.
Then I'd assign the geometry by appending it to the command in the binding.

So yes, what you wrote makes sense.

rvp

pfr

program[passmenu]       = ~/.config/spectrwm/./passmenu.sh $dmenu_bottom -fn $bar_font -nb $bar_color -nf $bar_font_color -sb $bar_color_selected -sf $bar_font_color_selected

Use this instead and roll back to the original passmenu.sh in post #8:

program[passmenu]       = xterm -class Pinentry -e $HOME/.config/spectrwm/passmenu.sh $dmenu_bottom -fn $bar_font -nb $bar_color -nf $bar_font_color -sb $bar_color_selected -sf $bar_font_color_selected

Thought, I don't understand who the trailing options are for. Some of them seem like they're for xterm, some not, and some don't make sense for it.

They way I've written it now, all options apart from -e are passed to passmenu.sh (which doesn't use them--or, are they being consumed by dmenu?) as done before.

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