Copilot CLI not recognizing neither keychain or keyring on WSL2 Ubuntu 24

[Wesztman]

Describe the bug

I've installed both gnome-keyring and keychain using apt, but I still get message about none of these found 🤔

Affected version

0.0.327

Steps to reproduce the behavior

Install gnome-keyring and keychain using sudo apt install.
Run copilot CLI and /login

Expected behavior

Copilot CLI should recognize that keyring or keychain is installed.

Additional context

WSL2, Ubuntu24

[SteveSandersonMS]

Sorry about that.

@devm33 Do you have any tips on diagnosing this, or if there is a known issue here?

[andyfeller]

Thank you for raising this up, @Wesztman! 🙇 I'd like to figure out what is different about your WSL Ubuntu 24.04 setup versus my fresh install which is receiving the default keyring pop up.

Demo

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS
Release:        24.04
Codename:       noble

$ sudo apt list libsecret-1-0 libsecret-1-dev libsecret-common gnome-keyring gnome-keyring-pkcs11 seahorse
Listing... Done
gnome-keyring-pkcs11/noble,now 46.1-2build1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gnome-keyring/noble,now 46.1-2build1 amd64 [installed]
libsecret-1-0/noble,now 0.21.4-1build3 amd64 [installed]
libsecret-1-dev/noble,now 0.21.4-1build3 amd64 [installed]
libsecret-common/noble,now 0.21.4-1build3 all [installed,automatic]
seahorse/noble 43.0-3build2 amd64

When I first logged in, I see Gnome keyring prompting me to create the default keyring:

Afterwards, copilot saved the credential to the keystore:

[Wesztman]

@andyfeller

That's very interesting, I get no popup 🤔 I looked into setting default password manually in the terminal, but it's not very straight fw..

I also installed pass but still no luck.

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS
Release:        24.04
Codename:       noble

gnome-keyring-pkcs11/noble,now 46.1-2build1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gnome-keyring/noble,now 46.1-2build1 amd64 [installed]
libsecret-1-0/noble,now 0.21.4-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libsecret-1-dev/noble 0.21.4-1build3 amd64
libsecret-common/noble,now 0.21.4-1build3 all [installed,automatic]
seahorse/noble 43.0-3build2 amd64

I wonder why I don't get any popup 🤔 will look into that

[Wesztman]

Seems like seahorse was the missing piece 😄 installing it made the popup pop up ✌️ now copilot seems to be able to add the key 😊

[andyfeller]

Thank you for the follow up and certainly happy to get this working for ya, @Wesztman! 🫶

I want to follow up with one of the other maintainers to confirm this is the problem. Afterwards, I think we should call this out in the installation docs for our Ubuntu and WSL users to be mindful of.

[andyfeller]

Before closing out this issue, @Wesztman, I want to mention that I'm working with our GitHub Docs team to expand the GitHub Copilot CLI docs to expand on authentication and troubleshooting situations like this.

Thank you again for raising this up and look forward to hear what copilot helps you accomplish!

[luke-barnett]

I had the packages installed, but I needed to add the following to my .bashrc, which starts the keyring with an empty password to get it working (happy enough with an empty password, given it's WSL2). Note: I did get Sonnet 4.5 to generate it for me.

# Start gnome-keyring for WSL2
if [ -z "$GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL" ]; then
    eval $(dbus-launch --sh-syntax)
    eval $(echo "" | gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock --components=secrets 2>/dev/null)
    export GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL
fi

Bonus points if someone has hints on how to proxy it through to the Windows keyring to use an actual password.

[chris-steenkamp]

I had the packages installed, but I needed to add the following to my .bashrc, which starts the keyring with an empty password to get it working (happy enough with an empty password, given it's WSL2). Note: I did get Sonnet 4.5 to generate it for me.

Start gnome-keyring for WSL2

if [ -z "$GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL" ]; then
eval $(dbus-launch --sh-syntax)
eval $(echo "" | gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock --components=secrets 2>/dev/null)
export GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL
fi
Bonus points if someone has hints on how to proxy it through to the Windows keyring to use an actual password.

Just a note that doing this broke my environment by setting DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS to point to temporary file (which is incorrect behaviour). This caused some other tools (specifically podman) to break.

In the end, I just needed to install seahorse (as mentioned in a previous comment).