Ubuntu 24.04 howdy 3.0.0 beta installation

[joezhouchenye]

I found many issues related to Ubuntu 24.04. However, they are messing up different howdy versions and don't solve the problem. So, I decided to create this issue and post my working solution.

1. Clone the project with version 3.0.0 beta
2. Edit meson.options and modify option('install_pam_config', type: 'boolean', value: true, description: 'Install pam config file (for Debian/Ubuntu)'). Build and install as mentioned in README. I have no idea why this isn't a default behavior.
3. sudo howdy add. It might give errors. Most python modules can be installed using apt except dlib.
4. sudo pip3 install dlib --break-system-packages. Try to add face again. It will ask you to run a script to download models. Chinese users may have network problems. Check the script and manually do that.
5. Config the camera https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy/wiki/Common-issues#error-when-trying-to-add-a-face-model
6. Now, you can add and test the face. Authentication for sudo should work now.
7. The login face recognition still has a problem. You need to manually modify /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/howdy/compare.py. Add sys.path.append('/usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages') after the import sys line.
8. The new version has a GUI utility howdy-gtk. Python module elevate is needed which is also not provide by apt. sudo pip3 install elevate --break-system-packages. With sudo howdy-gtk, you get the following GUI:

[Halmoni100]

Thank you so much! Personally I also had to add the following to the top of /etc/pam.d/common-auth in order to get the PAM integration to work.

auth sufficient /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/security/pam_howdy.so

I think you posted this somewhere else, but it's here for reference.

[joezhouchenye]

I thought step 2 would do this (Install pam config file). Sorry for not testing this step. I found a file named /usr/share/pam-configs/howdy (Maybe created by previous install) and I modified it with the following content:

Name: Howdy
Default: yes
Priority: 512
Auth-Type: Primary
Auth:
	[success=end default=ignore]        /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/security/pam_howdy.so

Maybe you will have to run sudo pam-auth-update and enable Howdy there.
After this, the common-auth is automatically modified with the following line:

auth	[success=3 default=ignore]        /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/security/pam_howdy.so 

[Halmoni100]

The meson build default prefix (for me) seems to be /usr/local, so the howdy pam config ends up in /usr/local/share/pam-configs/howdy, and so pam-auth-update does not detect it.

Sym linking /usr/local/share/pam-configs/howdy to /usr/share/pam-configs/howdy seems to work for me.