Hi friends! Has anyone here had success using Yubikeys on Linux? I’ve been going back and forth with support to no avail, trying to get my Yubikey 5C NFC to play nicely on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Any suggestions are appreciated.

I have the following Yubikey-related packages on my system:

libyubikey-udev 1.20.0-3 [Ubuntu/jammy universe]
├── is installed
└── udev rules for unprivileged access to YubiKeys

libyubikey0 1.13-6 [Ubuntu/jammy universe]
├── is installed
└── Yubikey OTP handling library runtime

python3-yubikey-manager 4.0.7-1 [Ubuntu/jammy universe]
├── is installed
└── Python 3 library for configuring a YubiKey — transitional package

yubikey-manager 4.0.7-1 [Ubuntu/jammy universe]
├── is installed
└── Python library and command line tool for configuring a YubiKey

yubikey-manager-qt 1.2.4-1 [Ubuntu/jammy universe]
├── is installed
└── Graphical application for configuring a YubiKey

yubikey-personalization-gui 3.1.24-1build1 [Ubuntu/jammy universe]
├── is installed
└── Graphical personalization tool for YubiKey tokens

libfido2-1 1.10.0-1 [Ubuntu/jammy main]
├── is installed
└── library for generating and verifying FIDO 2.0 objects

python3-fido2 0.9.1-1 [Ubuntu/jammy universe]
├── is installed
└── Python library for implementing FIDO 2.0

pcscd 1.9.5-3ubuntu1 [Ubuntu/jammy universe]
├── is installed
└── Middleware to access a smart card using PC/SC (daemon side)

UPDATE: After working my way down the entire software stack, I contacted the vendor of my USB-C port and requested a replacement. It did the trick…

  • jaxxed
    42•10 months ago

    yubikey works on every linux distro I have tried, and even on freebsd. Some people say it “works out of the box” but that part is not true on every distro. Every distro will recognize the device when it is plugged in, but not every distro will all 2FA actions out of the box, and almost no distro comes with the management tools.

    On linux (and BSD) you can install a CCID tool to get the 2FA, which installs software that needs to be running (you can use the yubikey as a keyboard approach if you really need it) On Linux you can install a manager tool like ykman is easy, if you want to manage the tooling on your card On Linux you can setup PAM (authentication) so that yubikey can be used for logins, sudo auth etc On Linux you can use yubikey to do advanced things like manage the encryption keys for encrypted disks

    As always, off to the Arch docs: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/YubiKey

    • IrdialOPEnglish
      3•10 months ago

      I appreciate the detailed response. I looked at the Arch wiki page and ensured that I have all packages listed. Still, the output of ykman info is “Error: No YubiKey detected!” :P

      • jaxxed
        1•10 months ago

        What was your mesg/jpurnalctl output when you plugged in the key?

        • IrdialOPEnglish
          1•10 months ago

          I do not get any messages. I’m starting to think there is an issue with my motherboard’s USB-C port. If I can get my hands on a USB-C to USB-A adapter, I can test this theory…

  • /home/pineapplelover
    9•10 months ago

    It works fine straight out of the box. If you need the totp codes, personalization, setting it up download the yubikey apps (probably in your apt repo or check documentation)

  • @[email protected]English
    8•10 months ago

    I use my Yubikeys all the time in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Linux Mint - a Yubikey 5 NFC and a Yubikey 5C NFC (mostly with Firefox). I have never had any problems with them. Mint is Ubuntu-based so they ought to work in Ubuntu. Sorry I can’t advise you on why yours isn’t working, but it should definitely be possible to get it working.

    • WeAreAllOneEnglish
      2•10 months ago

      Tumbleweed user here. Thinking of buying a yubikey; is it easy to setup for logins etc or does it involve terminal commands etc. I mean is there a repository app?

  • 30021190
    7•10 months ago

    For gnome login, (on Fedora at least) you need to install the packages and edit PAM config to enable the yubikey with login.

    • IrdialOPEnglish
      2•10 months ago

      Thanks for your response. I am just looking to use the Yubikey for OTP/passkeys, not system login

      • 30021190
        1•10 months ago

        Should just be plug and play… If your browser is a snap or flatpak then you might need to give it permissions to access your usb devices.

    • IrdialOPEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      Unfortunately, pcscd is running… At this point I am thinking it is a hardware issue with my setup

  • @8osm3rka
    6•10 months ago

    Are you talking about 2FA login for your own user account or U2F/PIV/WebAuthn in your browser? The latter seems to work out of the box on any non-snap or flatpak browser, but the former needs a bit more setup as that is not a standard feature in Ubuntu yet. I recommend using ykman and yubico-piv-tool for configuring yubikeys in linux, but Yubico also provides a GUI application on their website

    • IrdialOPEnglish
      2•10 months ago

      Definitely the latter. I have only tried using the Flatpak version of Firefox, but the system won’t even detect the key so it’s no shock Firefox can’t either…

  • Dr. WeskerEnglish
    4•10 months ago

    I’m on Debian, but I think I’ve only ever used mine in Librewolf. But I can verify it works fine for me in the browser.

  • @[email protected]
    2•10 months ago

    I used to use one without any issues, it wasn’t the 5 series but it had NFC. The worst part was setting up to use it as an ssh key. Just normal 2FA with it worked straight out of the box (firefox/arch). Is that what you’re trying to do?

  • @[email protected]
    2•10 months ago

    I have tried a yubikey on ubuntu without any problems. Could you please describe what exactly isn’t working

  • @TCB13English
    -15•10 months ago

    Removed by mod

    • KarnaEnglish
      5•10 months ago

      If that was really true, then most of the enterprise servers would have be using Windows/Mac OSX by now 🤭

      • @TCB13English
        -7•10 months ago

        There’s a difference between Linux on the desktop (a pile of shit) and Linux on the server (the way to go). Get over it. It hurts but it’s true.

          • @TCB13English
            -4•10 months ago

            The difference is that there’s a lot of commercial support when it comes to supporting Linux servers due to many reasons, when it comes to the desktop it simply isn’t there.

            If you require “professional” software such as MS Office, Adobe Apps, Autodesk, NI Circuit Design and whatnot Linux isn’t a viable options. The alternatives wont cut it if you require serious collaboration… virtualization, emulation (wine) may work but won’t be nice. Going for Linux kinda adds the same pains of going macOS but 10x. Once you open the virtualization door your productivity suffers greatly, your CPU/RAM requirements are higher and suddenly you’ve to deal with issues in two operating systems instead of just one. And… let’s face it, nothing with GPU acceleration will ever run decently unless big companies start fixing things - GPU passthroughs and getting video back into the main system are a pain and add delays.

            To make things worse the Linux desktop development ecosystem is essentially non existent. The success of Windows and macOS is the fact that they provide solid and stable APIs and development tools that “make it easy” to develop for those platforms and Linux is very bad at that. The major pieces of Linux are constantly and ever changing requiring large and frequent re-works of apps. There aren’t distribution “sponsored” IDEs (like Visual Studio or Xcode), userland API documentation, frameworks etc.