Hey, where's my Yubikey?

This post is just for myself to remember this as it was behind so many clicks on the oh so phenomenal ArchWiki.

For many years I have been using multifactor authentication where possible. SMS in the beginning and today mostly authenticator application(s) or the Yubikey(s). These together with a decent password manager make me feel at least a bit more secure with all the accounts and passwords I need to remember. If you are looking for a password manager to help make your life a bit laid back when it comes to password management I recommend you take a look at BitWarden.

Problems …

Some nights ago I decided to install Arch Linux on one of my workstations. Easy and fast installation with a very customizable system, what’s there not to like 😀

Since the system is so highly customizable, you need to read. And I do really love learning something new, I just have an issue remembering a week down the line what I did. So that’s why this post is here. This way I can find it fast the next time I need it.

So, the problem was that my Yubikey did not show up in Firefox. First thing first you always check dmesg to make sure the device is even recognized. And so I did,

usb 1-2: new full-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd  
usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1050, idProduct=0120, bcdDevice= 5.02  
usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0  
usb 1-2: Product: Security Key by Yubico  
usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Yubico

And there it was. At least my system knew about it. Some duckduckgo.com:fu later I found an article on ArchWiki Fido U2F authentication pointing me to the libu2f-host package. Easy as 1,2,3 fire up pacman install the package and restart the browser and my Yubikey is back in business.

$ sudo pacman -S libu2f-host  
resolving dependencies...  
looking for conflicting packages...  

This as stated above is not meant to be a guide on MFA or the Yubikey, just a placeholder for me to remember what I did if I ever run into it again.