Ferrite

⚠️ Work in Progress (WIP) - This project is currently under active development and may have incomplete features or bugs.

A terminal-based authentication interface for greetd, built with Rust and ratatui.

Overview

Ferrite provides a clean, keyboard-driven TUI for authenticating users and starting desktop sessions through greetd. It automatically discovers available desktop sessions and system users, allowing for a streamlined login experience.

Features

• 🖥️ Terminal-based user interface
• 🔐 Secure password input with masking
• 📋 Automatic session discovery (Wayland and X11)
• 👤 Automatic user discovery from /etc/passwd
• ⌨️ Keyboard navigation (Up/Down arrows, Enter, Esc)
• 🎨 Clean, minimal UI design

Requirements

• Rust (latest stable version)
• greetd display manager
• A Unix-like system (Linux/BSD)

Building

# Clone the repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd ferrite

# Build the project
cargo build --release

# The binary will be at target/release/ferrite

Installation

After building, you can install the binary:

Using Make (recommended):

# Build the project (as regular user, no sudo needed)
make build

# Install binary + systemd tmpfiles configuration (requires sudo)
sudo make install

# After installation, create the directories defined in the tmpfiles config
sudo systemd-tmpfiles --create /etc/tmpfiles.d/ferrite.conf

Manual installation:

# Install to /usr/local/bin (requires sudo)
sudo cp target/release/ferrite /usr/local/bin/

# Install systemd tmpfiles configuration (requires sudo)
sudo install -Dm644 systemd-tmpfiles.conf /etc/tmpfiles.d/ferrite.conf
sudo systemd-tmpfiles --create /etc/tmpfiles.d/ferrite.conf

# Or install to your local bin directory (no sudo needed)
cp target/release/ferrite ~/.local/bin/

Uninstall:

sudo make uninstall

Configuration

Ferrite automatically discovers:

• Sessions: From standard XDG directories:

  • /usr/share/wayland-sessions
  • /usr/share/xsessions
  • /usr/local/share/wayland-sessions
  • /usr/local/share/xsessions
  • /etc/X11/Sessions
  • ~/.local/share/wayland-sessions
  • ~/.local/share/xsessions

• Users: From /etc/passwd (users with UID 0 or >= 1000, excluding nologin shells)

Usage

Configure greetd to use ferrite as the greeter. Example greetd configuration:

[terminal]
vt = 1

[default_session]
command = "ferrite"
user = "greeter"

Controls

• ↑/↓: Navigate between fields
• ←/→: Navigate within select fields (session, username)
• Enter: Submit authentication

Project Structure

src/
├── main.rs      # Entry point & event loop
├── app.rs       # Application state & logic
├── ui.rs        # UI rendering
├── event.rs     # Event handling
├── auth.rs      # Authentication logic (greetd IPC)
├── util.rs      # Utility functions (session/user discovery)
└── widgets/     # Custom TUI widgets
    ├── mod.rs
    ├── widget.rs
    ├── text.rs
    └── select.rs

Development

# Run in development mode
cargo run

# Run tests (if any)
cargo test

# Check for issues
cargo clippy

# Format code
cargo fmt

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

This project is currently in active development. Contributions are welcome, but please note that the codebase may be subject to significant changes.

Acknowledgments

• Built with ratatui
• Uses greetd-ipc for authentication
• Inspired by ly, a TUI display manager for Linux