How to unlock Gnome Keyring on Debian headless (WSL 2) and make it work in Python?

Question

I have read the guindance that the keyring package has in its project for headless linux systems.

So the main recommendation is to install the gnome-keyring package in order to work with the Secret Service Backend.

sudo apt install gnome-keyring

Then, as I already have the dbus package installed I just run:

dbus-run-session -- sh

But, as I am in WSL 2 I get a weird prompt, it seems that PS1 is not parsed and I get something like this:

\[\e]0;\u@\h: \w\a\]\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]$

In a normal Debian or Ubuntu instance I would get $

I send the password to unlock the keyring

echo 'db' | gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock

I also tried to enter the password manually through stdin as this answer points out, with the same result:

gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock

Now the guide says "run your application in the same D-Bus session as the daemon". I don't know if I need to do something special to achieve that. I just run python after entering the password.

$ python
>>> import keyring
>>> keyring.get_keyring()
<keyring.backends.SecretService.Keyring object at 0x7f383b89f220>
>>> keyring.set_password("system", "username", "password")

But at this point I get this error:

dbus-daemon[9337]: [session uid=1000 pid=9337] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.secrets' requested by ':1.4' (uid=1000 pid=9339 comm="python ")
GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL=/home/db/.cache/keyring-TPE3M1
dbus-daemon[9337]: [session uid=1000 pid=9337] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.secrets'
dbus-daemon[9337]: [session uid=1000 pid=9337] Activating service name='org.gnome.keyring.SystemPrompter' requested by ':1.5' (uid=1000 pid=9356 comm="/usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --start --foreground")
Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused

(gcr-prompter:9364): Gtk-WARNING **: 09:36:04.690: cannot open display:
dbus-daemon[9337]: [session uid=1000 pid=9337] Activated service 'org.gnome.keyring.SystemPrompter' failed: Process org.gnome.keyring.SystemPrompter exited with status 1

** (gnome-keyring-daemon:9356): WARNING **: 09:36:04.701: couldn't create system prompt: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.gnome.keyring.SystemPrompter exited with status 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/path/to/env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/keyring/core.py", line 60, in set_password
    get_keyring().set_password(service_name, username, password)
File "/path/to/env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/keyring/backends/SecretService.py", line 87, in set_password
    collection = self.get_preferred_collection()
File "/path/to/env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/keyring/backends/SecretService.py", line 67, in get_preferred_collection
    raise KeyringLocked("Failed to unlock the collection!")
keyring.errors.KeyringLocked: Failed to unlock the collection!

And the processes tree look like this

I also tried with

dbus-run-session -- bash

With the same result

Possible WSL 2 Issue

I also found an issue on WSL2 project where "jaraco" says that the guidance that I followed may give some hints, but I could not get it to work.

Alternative Backend

I tried with other backend as well, though in some places they say that this backend is not recommendable:

“alternate” , possibly-insecure backends, originally part of the core package, but available for opt-in"

pip install keyrings.alt

With similar result. The keyring backend was different:

>>> keyring.get_keyring()
<keyring.backends.chainer.ChainerBackend object at 0x7ffbad5fd040>

Any alternative or recommendation? Am I missing some step? Is this possible to make in WSL 2? I think I will try in a debian machine directly to check if it is a problem of WSL or all Debian headless distros. Anybody make it work on Debian without Gnome desktop installed?

The next step would be to automate all the process , but first I need to get this to work

Update

Well, I can confirm that in a virtual machine on Debian 11.3 works fine. So it must be something to do with WSL 2

Answer 1

Note that I have been able to get this to work (WSL2, Debian Bullseye, python3, gnome-keyring, Windows 10). I can understand parts of why it may not be working for you, but there are some minor differences in the errors you are seeing from what I can reproduce (when I try to break it). We'll come back to those if we need to, but let me go through what I've tried successfully so far.

But, as I am in WSL 2 I get a weird prompt

First, I think this is an orthogonal issue, but perhaps not. I always suspect startup configuration files for this type of weirdness, so I would try eliminating those from the equation:

dbus-run-session -- bash --noprofile --norc

If the prompt looks normal when running that, I'd look to ~/.profile since it sounds like it it happens both Bash and Dash ( sh ) for you and Dash doesn't have an rc file.

Again, I'm assuming that's not the problem with the keyring, but it doesn't hurt to eliminate it as a potential contributor.

As for the main keyring problem, that, I believe, is because:

1. Gnome Keyring is attempting to ask for a password. It does this with a graphical password prompt, which fails because ...

2. You are running Windows 10 without an X server, or if you are running an X server, then the DISPLAY variable is "lost". That's the cannot open display error in the trace. If you were on Windows 11, the graphical prompt would display. You could also configure Windows 10 WSL to use a third-party X server like VcXsrv. Or you could run with Xrdp. See this Super User question (and others) for more info.

Of course, that would no longer count as "headless", which is your question. So we need to figure out why gnome-keyring is asking for a password. I can think of at least possible three reasons, but there may be others:

• The default collection (keyring) doesn't exist yet. I'm fairly sure that's not the case for you, since it should have been created when you ran the --unlock . Of course, you can verify this by checking ~/.local/share/keyrings .

• gnome-keyring-daemon hasn't yet been started, and needs the keyring password. Again, you've clearly run that here. You've done the right thing by running the dbus-run-session first, then inside that session, run the --unlock . You can, of course, verify that it is running with a ps -efH or similar.

• The password that was passed via --unlock is wrong.

So with the first two eliminated, we're left with the assumption there's an issue with the unlock password. If you created the collection with the initial --unlock , then the first password you used should be the one set on the collection.

There are some "gotchas" here. First, contrary to what the answer you linked says, I'm convinced that the newline is added to the password. If you somehow initially set the password without a newline, you'd need to unlock it with echo -n . Eg:

echo -n 'db' | gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock

Second, it doesn't sound like this was the case for you, but if you create the keyring through the normal frontend, then it appears to me that the password may be salted. I have not been able to use gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock (in any of its forms) to unlock a collection where the password was entered through the graphical prompt. To clarify:

• If I initially create the keyring via gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock , then I can unlock it either through the GUI askpass program that it uses (on Windows 11 or with a Windows 10 VcXsrv installation), but ...

• If I initially create the keyring via an initial access of it which prompts for the password through the GUI, then I can subsequently only unlock it through the GUI. I can no longer use gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock .

Assuming this is a new keyring in WSL2, then my advice would be to remove it and try again:

dbus-run-session -- bash --noprofile --norc
# Back them up first if you'd like
rm -rf ~/.local/share/keyrings
echo -n 'db' | gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock
python3

Note that you can test the keyring module directly from the shell via:

python3 -m keyring set system username
# Will prompt for the secret
python3 -m keyring get system username
# Should return the secret

If things are working from there, they'll work from your code. If it fails, it should do so with the same error at least. This might save some time in troubleshooting if this doesn't work.