Trigger looses ed25519 public key

[matmemo]

Hi, we are using your app for an ssh door with a small group of users. (Thank you very much by the way :)

Since about a month ago it seems that the trigger app looses its configured ed25519 public key on many of the users devices.
It's not completely clear when and why this happens but we are suspecting it being related to updates to the underlying Android system.

The symptoms are always the same:

• When trying to open the ssh door the app shows an error about the missing public key.
• The public key isn't shown in the settings public key screen anymore, while it is still possible to export the related private key.
• Creation of a new ed25519 key does not work anymore on the affected devices.

The only workaround we have found so far is to generate a new key pair with another algorithm like one of the ecdsa or rsa variants.

Do you have any idea what could be causing this? Or what we could try to get a better understanding that could be helpful in finding the cause for this problem?

[mwarning]

hi, this sounds bad. Public key pair seriialization is handled here: https://github.com/mwarning/trigger/blob/master/app/src/main/kotlin/app/trigger/ssh/SshTools.kt#L23

I do not see a problem with the code. It is interesting that the public key is lost, but not the private key.
There is probably an error being thrown when the key is lost. If the phone is not restarted, then it might be able to retrieve this error message via logcat or other means.

[mwarning]

@matmemo you write that a new ed25519 key cannot be created. Is is the menu point missing or is there an error displayed or printed on the terminal (logcat) ? That would be a good lead towards the cause.

[namibj]

I was also affected; I just now pressed three-dot->new->(generic-ssh, then: keypair toggle tapped from off state, resulting in this first screenshot):

Pressing "Create" instantly results in the following visual; the only difference is the obviously ephemeral Toast message:

For comparison, if I select the next option in the drop down, it selects itself as expected:

If I then go further and press "Create", I get this:

@mwarning if you want me/us to collect you some logs please tell us how we would go about acquiring them.

[mwarning]

@namibj thank you for the screenshots. Logs would be very helpful. This is how you get logs:

• enable "Developer options" on your device (need to tap device version a few times in the settings ..)
• enable "USB debugging" on your device
• connect your device to via usb to your laptop with Linux
• execute this line to see the logs for Trigger (make sure adb is installed and adb devices shows your device):

  adb logcat | grep -F "`adb shell ps | grep com.example.trigger | tr -s [:space:] ' ' | cut -d' ' -f2`"

• trigger the bug...

I hope this catches something helpful. Otherwise trigger would need be compiled as debug build and spinkled with debug messages..