Auth login hangs on Linux

[codification]

I suspect this is a duplicate of #45 but that has been reported as fixed.

Here is the version I am using and what I am trying to do:

$ npx berget --version && npx berget --debug auth login
2.2.21
Callback server listening on port 8787
DEBUG: Built authorization URL: https://k[REDACTED]/realms/berget/protocol/openid-connect/auth?...
^C

...meaning I interrupted it.
The [REDACTED] above is part of the output, meaning I never really see any URL that can be tried manually.

Expected: I would have expected a browser popup OR a URL to copy.
What happened: The process seemed hanged. No discernable side-effects.

Further information:

• I am running this in a podman container (toolbox on Fedora Kinoite).
• FWIW I have already created a berget account, an api key and added a BERGET_API_KEY env variable.
• Other commands, such as code init also silently hangs while waiting for browser auth

---

Operating System: Fedora Linux 44
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.27.0
Qt Version: 6.11.1
Kernel Version: 7.0.12-201.fc44.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland

[KarlGW]

Chiming in since I was thinking about filing an issue about this subject as well.

I'm running Pi in containers, and during berget setup inside a container running Ubuntu 26.04 a similar behaviour is noticed.
It attempts to open a browser tab/window, but since there is no browser in the container it just loops there (have given it some time).

No URL or anything shows up that can be pasted "manually". Such behaviour would be nice for GUI-less/headless setups.

The current workaround is to do it on the host, but it would be preferable to do the entire setup without installing anything on the host.

[marcusolsson]

Hi!

Due to technical limitations in our identity provider at the moment, we only support PKCE (browser flow) for authentication. Adding more authentication methods to support headless installations is on the roadmap, but unfortunately not supported today.

Other users have had success by authenticating in an environment with a browser, and then transferring the refresh and access tokens to the headless environment.

[codification]

Hi there,
Thank you for your reply.

Now, I prefer not to run the nodejs process outside containers since one of the main points of my setup is to isolate development environments and packages from each other and my "main" use. Specifically I prefer not to install nodejs and run node on my main system environment. That is of course on me and I can try to work around it.

I managed to work around it by cloning the repository, inserting debug statements around the lines 153-154 in pkce-flow.ts. It seems that on my system (that has open in the form of xdg-open but does not open a browser) there is no error, the awaited command just exits silently. Thereby not triggering any throws of errors and - hence - no handling of them, meaning no printing urging the user to act on the URL or informing them what actually failed (I see no "failed to open browser" message).
Using some debug logs and guessing I managed to extract parts of the URL, combine them together and paste into a browser. That way I managed to "log in" successfully while the process was waiting. Hence, I do not believe you actually need "more authentication methods" to support my headless case. I do understand, however, that it may not be at the top of your list.

---

Regarding suggestions for a fix/feature:
My node/TS skills are a bit behind so actually putting forth a PR with a suggestion is a bit outside my comfort zone at the moment. Also my agentic helper has decided to cause problems so I am stuck with my existing skills. Funny enough, berget-ai was one hypothesis I had for trying to improve that situation 😆
My plan, otherwise would be to check the result of the open command for success or provide a flag or option to allow the printing of the full non-redacted URL for copy-and-pasting with browsers.