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Yubico / yubioath-flutter

Yubico Authenticator for Desktop (Windows, macOS and Linux) and Android
https://developers.yubico.com/yubioath-flutter/
Apache License 2.0
1.02k stars 138 forks source link

Portable Version of Authenticator? #274

Closed borque closed 5 years ago

borque commented 6 years ago

Hello! Is it possible to create a portable version of the authenticator? My apologies for posting this question on this issue-tracker, but I asked Yubicos support and as their forum is closed they redirected me here with my question. Thanks for opinions and a reply!

emlun commented 6 years ago

Hi, thanks for your interest! What do you mean by "portable"?

borque commented 6 years ago

Hello! Wow, that's a quick reply, thanks! I mean a version that can simply be started ("out of the box") without a need for further installation. Yubioath 4.0.3 is only delivered as a complete installer (at least on windows). Background: I need to use 2FA on a machine which I own and control, but for license and warranty reasons of another software I can not install new software on it. On the other hand I am allowed to execute programmes that do not need an installation. Don't ask... I do not understand the reason for these strange conditions myself.

emlun commented 6 years ago

That sounds like... a pretty useless policy indeed. :)

On both Windows and Mac, the installed app directory (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Yubico\Yubico Authenticator) can actually be copied and run anywhere, so you should be able to run that from My Documents or off a USB drive or the like. I suppose we could provide a plain zip file as an official distribution, but I'm not sure we'd want to. @dagheyman thoughts?

Alternatively, if you have an Android phone with NFC or USB-C and a YubiKey NEO or 4C, you can use the Yubico Authenticator Android app when you don't have access to the desktop version.

borque commented 6 years ago

Hello! I am glad that I am not the only one who thinks of that policy that way! ;) Simply copying the directory and trying to run it from another location is exactly what I tried before posting here: It resulted in lots of error messages because of missing DLLs or other missing components. To make sure it was not because of missing system components installed alongside with Yubiauth (i.e. DotNet or VB or something like that, which is often bundled with installers) I tried it from different directories on two different machines: the one I initially had installed it on (my thought was there should be nothing missing after the successful installation) and on one where I never installed Yubiauth before. Same results?! Regarding the use of Android: I am currently on iOS...

Michael-Sabatini commented 5 years ago

About a year later but stumbled across this for pretty much the exact same reason. On the off chance someone else is looking for a quick solution here is what I ended up doing.

Quick work around is to download the Yubikey Authenticator .exe file and I just used 7ZIP to extract the .exe into a folder instead of actually installing it.

Dropped that folder into a USB stick and it's working like a charm đź‘Ť

P.S Yubico if you see this just take the easy solution like Microsoft did with visual studio code and just allow people to download the ZIP of the application then its pretty much portable already :)

dagheyman commented 5 years ago

Closing this since an official supported portable version of the app is unlikely to happen. I'm glad the workaround mentioned above works though.

nomade1999 commented 5 years ago

Thanks

I keep restarting the process regularly to free up resources

/André

On Sep 24, 2019, at 08:44, Dag Heyman notifications@github.com wrote:

 Closing this since an official supported portable version of the app is unlikely to happen. I'm glad the workaround mentioned above works though.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

schlagi123 commented 5 years ago

I think a portable version is very useful. Currently I have the case, that I must work on a computer without having root privileges. In this case a portable version is great

Tim-K-DFW commented 5 years ago

Hi guys, can you reconsider this and put an "official" portable version? I just tried the ZIP workaround, it failed with 64-bit version (on Win10, error message was about missing some DLL) and did work on the 32-bit version... but there's no guarantee it will keep working. "Portable" means no installation needed: you download an EXE file and run it. Use case is, as OP suggested, for a machine where I don't have admin access to install stuff. This will make the Yubico Authenticator a complete solution without any dependencies, and I'm sure many other users will appreciate that. Hope this will not be too difficult or time-consuming. Thank you in advance.

fdennis commented 5 years ago

Hey, We hear you and will have a discussion about this. In the meantime, have you tried what @emlun suggested above - installing Yubico Authenticator and copying it over?

Tim-K-DFW commented 5 years ago

Hi, appreciate the quick response! Yes, just tried that, same thing - VCRUNTIME140_1.dll is missing. Same behavior as when trying to simply unzip the EXE download.

fdennis commented 5 years ago

I see. Just to make sure I understand: Did you install it on one computer and then copy the files over to another?

Tim-K-DFW commented 5 years ago

Yes, that is correct. Fully installed on A (and it works), copied entire installation folder (in Program Files/...) to B, now trying to execute yubioath-desktop.exe on B, getting the above-mentioned DLL error.

fdennis commented 5 years ago

Yeah, that makes sense now that I think about it. The installer runs an executable called vcredist_x64.exe which is a Visual C++ Redistributable Package. When you copy over the installation folder, the files that vcredist_x64.exe installed do not get copied over. To run this executable you need admin permissions, which you do not have if you want a portable version. Basically, this means that copying from one computer to another will not work.

We will have to discuss this internally, but thank you all for letting us know about this.

emlun commented 5 years ago

Yeah, I think I only tried it by copying from the install folder to a different folder on the same machine. My mistake, sorry.

Kryophilos commented 3 years ago

With the MSI versions of the installer the situation is even worse; having opened the archive with 7zip there are no usable files to extract anymore. Why don't you just give the "portable" (no-installer) version of the authenticator a try? Seems the point is iterated here on a regular base... The authenticator is a great software which should be usable everywhere and without unnecessary hurdles! Thanks in advance for your kind understanding! And no offense meant, of course!

Tim-K-DFW commented 3 years ago

@emlun @fdennis guys this should be almost trivial for you, and will only make you product better. Yubico should be setting examples for the others.

Goldich commented 2 years ago

Hi, I have the same problem, that I can not install any application on my laptop. I found a solution with the MSI Packages:

Please change the path of the MSI file to your file location and choose as target dir a folder where you have write access (e.g. your desktop)

Alchemytr commented 5 months ago

I'm disappointed to learn this debate has been going on for more than 5 years.

I have a similar use case to others (and I expect many would be in the same situation - especially those who work for large corporations and/or government, where this type of restrictive policy is sadly the norm).

I was so happy when I saw the (apparently now defunct) workaround for the zipped installer. The MSI workaround looked promising but depends on Windows CLI access, which is almost inevitably locked down as well unless you've got a legitimate work requirement to access it.

Does anyone happen to know if it's possible to depackage the MSI file to get to the guts?

dainnilsson commented 5 months ago

In which way is the workaround not working for you? Both extracting the MSI via the command above, as well as manually copying the contents of the installation directory should work as far as I know.

Alchemytr commented 5 months ago

Thanks for coming back to me. The issue is that I'm unable to access the command line on my machine.

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On Tue, 18 June 2024, 17:54 Dain Nilsson, @.***> wrote:

In which way is the workaround not working for you? Both extracting the MSI via the command above, as well as manually copying the contents of the installation directory should work as far as I know.

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dainnilsson commented 5 months ago

If you have access to another Windows machine, I believe you should be able to extract the MSI there and then copy the files to the machine without command line access.

Alchemytr commented 4 months ago

Fantastic! Thanks very much for the info. I'll give it a go.

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On Wed, 19 June 2024, 16:33 Dain Nilsson, @.***> wrote:

If you have access to another Windows machine, I believe you should be able to extract the MSI there and then copy the files to the machine without command line access.

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