How to install Gnome-keyring on headless server?

[DavidA_1]

I have a Centos 7 headless server installation (no GUI). I want to install Gnome-keyring to support a Subversion client running on the command line. I believe that Gnome-keyring is installed and configured by default if Gnome-desktop is installed but I would prefer not to run a GUI on this system (which is headless).

What would be the easiest way for me to get Gnome-keyring running?

[TrevorH]

Is this for ssh authentication? If so then maybe running ssh-agent would be a better choice as that is not a GUI program. The gnome-keyring package has a truckload of dependencies, mostly GUI, that will get pulled in with it. I tried a yum install gnome-keyring on a fresh install using the minimal media and that wants to pull in 74 packages taking up 92MB.

[DavidA_1]

Thanks for your reply. It's not for SSH authentication. The Subversion client just uses a username and password in its authentication.

Actually 92MB would be fine. I just don't know what to do after installing the gnome-keyring package to get the keyring working.

[TrevorH]

No, nor me. Since it's a GUI app, it may well need a GUI not only installed but actually running.

I'm not sure it's the right tool for the job.

[devon]

Hi
Did you find any solution for this?

[TrevorH]

I am fairly certain that when this is asking for gnome-keyring for subversion use, they are assuming that you are using a GUI and thus that gnome-keyring will be installed. If you have a headless server with no GUI then I suspect that running ssh-agent will suffice and perform the same job. Last time I looked, subversion only had limited connectivity options and ssh is the one that's most used. Using gnome-keyring would allow you to store the ssh credentials and have them used automatically in a GUI environment but from the CLI, ssh-agent will perform the same job. I suspect that gnome uses ssh-agent behind the scenes.

[jlehtone]

On CentOS 8 'ps' shows:

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --daemonize --login
  \_ /usr/bin/ssh-agent -D -a /run/user/1000/keyring/.ssh

In other words the Gnome session has started gnome-keyring-daemon which in turn starts ssh-agent with ssh-keys from keyring.
I don't expect 7 to be different.

If the subversion does use ssh, then use of agent directly without gnome is what you should do.

You can run ssh-agent in CLI session. See man ssh-agent.
Alternatively, if you do connect to remote session with ssh and authenticate with keys from your local agent, then you can forward the agent with ssh too; no need to have remote agent.