Okay, I have had some assistance in debugging on Xubuntu 25.04 vs 25.10,
and this is what I have at the moment.
(1) openssh is indeed not a factor for the desktop use case, though ssh-
agent.socket uses the same method for setting the environment, and has
the same drawback
(2) It does not appear that xfce launches applications as transient
systemd user units. To see this, try running the following from a
terminal in a graphical session:
$ systemctl --user status $$
On GNOME, you will see something like:
ubuntu@q-vm:~$ systemctl --user status $$
● ptyxis-spawn-00f46578-4dcb-472e-8bda-8ea66aa37249.scope - [systemd-run]
/usr/bin/bash
Loaded: loaded
(/run/user/1000/systemd/transient/ptyxis-spawn-00f46578-4dcb-472e-8bda-8ea66aa37249.scope;
transient)
Transient: yes
Active: active (running) since Wed 2025-10-01 22:18:25 UTC; 8min ago
Invocation: 0e1008e4a3964294b70663380994d239
Tasks: 3 (limit: 3936)
Memory: 5.6M (peak: 22M)
CPU: 514ms
CGroup:
/user.slice/user-1000.slice/[email protected]/app.slice/ptyxis-spawn-00f46578-4dcb-472e-8bda-8ea66aa37249.scope
├─3590 /usr/bin/bash
├─3900 systemctl --user status 3590
└─3901 pager
Oct 01 22:18:25 q-vm systemd[2034]: Started ptyxis-
spawn-00f46578-4dcb-472e-8bda-8ea66aa37249.scope - [systemd-run]
/usr/bin/bash
On xfce (and e.g. an SSH session), you will see:
ubuntu@q-vm:~$ systemctl --user status $$
PID 3860 does not belong to any loaded unit.
(3) So, given that we moved from gnome-keyring to gcr4, my guess is that
gnome-keyring had another method of setting the SSH_AUTH_SOCK variable
in addition to the systemctl --user set-environment call in the socket
unit, and that gcr4 has no such mechanism. I have not verified this, but
setting gcr4 as an affected package based on that idea.
** Changed in: gcr4 (Ubuntu)
Milestone: None => ubuntu-25.10
** Changed in: gcr4 (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided => Critical
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2125549
Title:
ssh agent no longer work a questing upgrade
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