I have been using Pop OS 22.04 LTS for a few weeks, the latest and greatest from System76. A pretty lovely system that gives that creator’s vibe and pushes you to treat your computer not as a consumption device but much more.

With that said, I also have a set of physical keys from Yubico. I love the product and use it every day. However, while using Pop OS, I noticed that Yubico’s Authenticator doesn’t display 2FA codes.

The Problem

When running Yubico’s Authenticator as an App Image, I stumbled upon an error code.

WARNING: PC/SC not available. Smart card protocols will not function.

The Solution

The error tells us that we are missing a package. A quick check-in Google gives us a clue. But, first, we need to install the pcscd package. You get a package description if you type man pcscd in your Linux terminal. 

pcscd – PC/SC Smart Card Daemon

To install a package, we type sudo apt-get install pcscd. Suddenly, 2FA codes start to appear in Yubico’s Authenticator app. 

However, there is a catch. After I restarted the PC, the codes were gone again. So, to fix this problem permanently, I enabled the pcscd service. To do this, run these commands in your Linux terminal.

sudo systemctl enable pcscd

sudo systemctl start pcscd