[BUG] Last active does not update after initial timestamp because permission to access input devices is denied

[Ririshi]

Go Hass Agent Version
14.7.0-1

Describe the bug
As the title says, the last active timestamp does not update. The logs I attached show that the agent is being denied access to most of the input devices, which probably just means that it is not seeing any input and hence not updating the timestamp anymore.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install the agent through paru
2. Start the agent
3. Timestamp for last active is updated
4. Timestamp does not get updated again

Expected behavior
I expect the agent to have access to input devices and respond to them correctly.

Screenshots
The screenshot shows that the timestamp is only updated when I restart the agent.

Here's a list of mouse devices that are connected:

It seems the one thing it is able to monitor is a "game controller", which is my split keyboard running QMK firmware:

Logs

3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event0 error="open /dev/input/event0: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event1 error="open /dev/input/event1: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Monitoring input device. device=/dev/input/event10 name="foostan Corne v4 System Control"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event11 error="open /dev/input/event11: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event12 error="open /dev/input/event12: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event13 error="open /dev/input/event13: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event14 error="open /dev/input/event14: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event15 error="open /dev/input/event15: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event16 error="open /dev/input/event16: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event17 error="open /dev/input/event17: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event18 error="open /dev/input/event18: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event19 error="open /dev/input/event19: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event2 error="open /dev/input/event2: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event20 error="open /dev/input/event20: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event21 error="open /dev/input/event21: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event22 error="open /dev/input/event22: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event23 error="open /dev/input/event23: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event24 error="open /dev/input/event24: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event25 error="open /dev/input/event25: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event256 error="open /dev/input/event256: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event257 error="open /dev/input/event257: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event258 error="open /dev/input/event258: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event26 error="open /dev/input/event26: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event27 error="open /dev/input/event27: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event28 error="open /dev/input/event28: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event29 error="open /dev/input/event29: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event3 error="open /dev/input/event3: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event30 error="open /dev/input/event30: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event31 error="open /dev/input/event31: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event4 error="open /dev/input/event4: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event5 error="open /dev/input/event5: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event6 error="open /dev/input/event6: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event7 error="open /dev/input/event7: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event8 error="open /dev/input/event8: permission denied"
3:43AM DEBUG Could not open input device. device=/dev/input/event9 error="open /dev/input/event9: permission denied"
3:43AM INFO Initialized input device monitoring. device_count=1

Desktop (please complete the following information):

Operating System: CachyOS Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.22.0
Qt Version: 6.10.2
Kernel Version: 6.18.9-2-cachyos (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.

[joshuar]

Hey there, thanks for trying out Go Hass Agent and reporting this issue.

I can confirm the issues reported. I have reworked and rewritten the code so it now is event (rather than poll based) and will be much more accurate (down to 5s, which can be adjusted in preferences).

In regard to the permissions, using this sensor will require some more capabilities applied to the agent binary and the user running the agent in additional groups. The packages generated here on GitHub will have the required capabilities, but you'll need to add the user running the agent to the input group for the sensor to work correctly. More details in the README.

This will be available in the next release that will be out in the next few days.

[Ririshi]

Hi, thanks for the explanation. I saw that last active was pretty new, so it makes sense that there is no documentation for it yet. Thanks for working on this to refine it and for adding docs! For folks like me, who are new to daily driving Linux, configuring things can be pretty complex sometimes. I did find something about the input group online, but was a bit hesitant to change it, as I also read about security implications of having the user be allowed to essentially run keyloggers. Any malware could read all of my input devices without root privileges, if I add my user to the input group, right?

[joshuar]

Hey there, yes unfortunately, these additional permissions may reduce the security of the system running the agent. Adding your user to the input group could break things and the capabilities on the binary that are also required could definitely be exploited.

Go Hass Agent will gracefully keep running if you don't grant the permissions, however you don't get that sensor data.

It's a bit unfortunate that AFAIK, there isn't more fine-grained security functionality I could use in Go Hass Agent These permissions are a bit of an overeach for what is needed, but there is nothing finer-grained 😦

[Ririshi]

Perhaps it's possible to run a system service that can in turn expose a simple subset of whatever the input group would give you access to. If we only need to track the timestamp of the latest input, perhaps it could expose that through some kind of IPC mechanism? I feel like such a thing should already exist out there, but I haven't looked yet.

[joshuar]

Hey there thanks for the suggestion. I'll have to look into that in the future. For now, I believe the latest versions solve the issue described, so I'll close off this issue.

If there is still a problem with user activity not updating, please re-open.

Cheers!