google-authenticator command not found

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

google-authenticator: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: google-authenticator: command not found

Solutions to google-authenticator: command not found

How To Fix google-authenticator: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu google-authenticator is provided by libpam-google-authenticator package.

libpam-google-authenticator is:

The Google Authenticator project includes implementations of one-time passcode generators for several mobile platforms, as well as a pluggable authentication module (PAM). One-time passcodes are generated using open standards developed by the Initiative for Open Authentication (OATH) (which is unrelated to OAuth).

These implementations support the HMAC-Based One-time Password (HOTP) algorithm specified in RFC 4226 and the Time-based One-time Password (TOTP) algorithm currently in draft.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install libpam-google-authenticator

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install libpam-google-authenticator.

sudo apt -y install libpam-google-authenticator

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install libpam-google-authenticator

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix google-authenticator command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.