greetd-moongreet/DECISIONS.md

# Decisions

## 2026-03-31 – Fourth audit: power timeout, timing mitigation, release profile, GREETD_SOCK caching

- **Who**: Ragnar, Dom
- **Why**: Fourth triple audit found moongreet power.rs had no timeout on loginctl (greeter could freeze), username enumeration via timing differential, GREETD_SOCK re-read on every login, missing release profile, and missing GResource compression.
- **Tradeoffs**: 500ms minimum login response time adds slight delay on fast auth but prevents timing-based username enumeration. Power timeout (30s + SIGKILL) matches moonset pattern — aggressive but prevents greeter freeze.
- **How**: (1) power.rs adapted from moonset with 30s timeout + SIGKILL (nix dependency added). (2) 500ms min response floor in attempt_login via Instant + glib::timeout_future. (3) GREETD_SOCK cached in GreeterState at startup. (4) `[profile.release]` with LTO, codegen-units=1, strip. (5) `compressed="true"` on GResource entries. (6) SYNC comments on duplicated blur/background functions.

## 2026-03-30 – Full audit fix: security, quality, performance (v0.6.2)

- **Who**: Ragnar, Dom
- **Why**: Three parallel audits (security, code quality, performance) identified 10 actionable findings across the codebase — from world-readable cache dirs to a GPU blur geometry bug to a race condition in fingerprint probing.
- **Tradeoffs**: `too_many_arguments` Clippy warnings suppressed with `#[allow]` rather than introducing a `UiWidgets` struct — GTK's `clone!` macro with `#[weak]` refs requires individual widget parameters, a struct would fight the idiom. Async avatar loading skipped because `Pixbuf` is `!Send`; cache already prevents repeat loads. TOCTOU socket pre-check removed entirely — `connect()` in login_worker already handles errors, the `metadata()` check gave false security guarantees.
- **How**: Cache dirs use `DirBuilder::mode(0o700)` instead of `create_dir_all`. Blur config clamped to `0.0..=200.0` with `is_finite()` guard. Blur texture cached in `Rc<RefCell<Option<gdk::Texture>>>` across monitors. FingerprintProbe device proxy cached in `GreeterState` with generation counter to prevent stale async writes. GPU blur geometry fixed (`-pad` origin shift instead of texture stretching). `is_valid_gtk_theme` extracted as testable function. 9 new tests.

## 2026-03-29 – Fingerprint authentication via greetd multi-stage PAM

- **Who**: Ragnar, Dom
- **Why**: moonlock supports fprintd but moongreet rejected multi-stage auth. Users with enrolled fingerprints couldn't use them at the login screen.
- **Tradeoffs**: Direct fprintd D-Bus verification (like moonlock) can't start a greetd session — greetd controls session creation via PAM. Using greetd multi-stage means PAM decides the auth order (fingerprint first, then password fallback), not truly parallel. Acceptable — matches standard pam_fprintd behavior.
- **How**: Replace single-pass auth with a loop over auth_message rounds. Secret prompts get the password, non-secret prompts (fprintd) get None and block until PAM resolves. fprintd D-Bus probe (gio::DBusProxy) only for UI — detecting device availability and enrolled fingers. 60s socket timeout when fingerprint available. Config option `fingerprint-enabled` (default true).

## 2026-03-28 – Remove embedded wallpaper from binary

- **Who**: Selene, Dom
- **Why**: Wallpaper is installed by moonarch to /usr/share/moonarch/wallpaper.jpg. Embedding a 374K JPEG in the binary is redundant. GTK background color (Catppuccin Mocha base) is a clean fallback.
- **Tradeoffs**: Without moonarch installed AND without config, greeter shows plain dark background instead of wallpaper. Acceptable — that's the expected minimal state.
- **How**: Remove wallpaper.jpg from GResources, return None from resolve_background_path when no file found, skip wallpaper window creation and background picture when no path available.

## 2026-03-28 – GPU blur via GskBlurNode replaces CPU blur

- **Who**: Ragnar, Dom
- **Why**: CPU-side Gaussian blur (`image` crate) blocked the GTK main thread for 500ms–2s on 4K wallpapers at cold cache. Disk cache and async orchestration added significant complexity.
- **Tradeoffs**: GPU blur quality is slightly different (box-blur approximation vs true Gaussian), acceptable for wallpaper backgrounds. Removes `image` crate dependency entirely (~15 transitive crates eliminated). No disk cache needed.
- **How**: `Snapshot::push_blur()` + `GskRenderer::render_texture()` on `connect_realize`. Blur happens once on the GPU when the widget gets its renderer, producing a concrete `gdk::Texture`. Zero startup latency. Symmetric with moonlock and moonset.

## 2026-03-28 – Optional background blur via `image` crate (superseded)

- **Who**: Selene, Dom
- **Why**: Blurred wallpaper as greeter background is a common UX pattern for login screens
- **Tradeoffs**: Adds `image` crate dependency (~15 transitive crates); CPU-side Gaussian blur at load time adds startup latency proportional to image size and sigma. Acceptable because blur runs once and the texture is shared across monitors.
- **How**: `load_background_texture(bg_path, blur_radius)` loads texture, optionally applies `imageops::blur()`, returns blurred `gdk::Texture`. Config option `background-blur: Option<f32>` in `[appearance]` TOML section.

## 2026-03-28 – Audit fixes for shared wallpaper texture (v0.4.1)
- **Who**: Selene, Dominik
- **Why**: Quality, performance, and security audits flagged issues in `load_background_texture()`, debug logging, and greetd error handling
- **Tradeoffs**: GResource path now requires UTF-8 (returns `None` for non-UTF-8 instead of aborting); 50 MB wallpaper limit is generous but prevents OOM; debug logging off by default trades observability for security
- **How**: GResource branch via `resources_lookup_data()` + `from_bytes()` (no abort), file size limit, error details only at debug level, `MOONGREET_DEBUG` env var for log level, greetd retry path truncation matching `show_greetd_error()`