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?

• I have Arch Linux with Openbox Window Manager, but without a Desktop Environment
• thus, in the qtkeychain‘s detectKeyringBackend() function the next condition will be applied:

...
    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.

Useful links

• GNOME/Keyring
• Python bindings to Freedesktop.org Secret Service API
• Specifications/ secret-storage-spec
• Using the DBUS C API
• libsecret
• Understanding D-Bus
• dbus-monitor — debug probe to print message bus messages
• How to modify a dbus service’s “Exec” line without losing the changes in case of upgrade

Similar posts

• 03/17/2017 Arch: nm-applet serviceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files
• 04/25/2019 Linux: GPG-keys, Pass – passwords manager, and passwords import from the KeePass database
• 05/06/2017 Arch Linux: запускаем Diablo 2