Ubuntu
gnome-system-tools package

Xubuntu: Cannot change own password because users-admin needs gnome-about-me

Bug #484559 reported by positivek on 2009-11-18

This bug affects 1 person

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to
	gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)	Invalid	Wishlist	Unassigned
Declined for Karmic by Sebastien Bacher
	gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu)	Fix Released	Low	Unassigned
Declined for Karmic by Sebastien Bacher

Bug Description

Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

I have a relatively newly installed Xubuntu 9.10 installation, no weird modifications, has updates. I tried using the Xubuntu main menu's Users and Groups to change my password, but it will not let me. It seems that "gnome-about-me" is missing, even though it is required for me to change my password.

Reproduce:
1. Install Xubuntu 9.10 with first-password.
2. Xfce main menu --> System --> Users and Groups
3. Unlock using "Click to make changes"
4. Click "Properties" for my username
5. Click "Change Password..."
6. BUG: Nothing happens. No new windows pop up. Nothing. Inability to change password.

----- additional info -----
I tried starting "Users and Groups" by running "users-admin" on the command line. When I click "Change Password...", the following error is output:
WARNING **: Error spawning gnome-about-me: Failed to execute child process "gnome-about-me" (No such file or directory)

See screenshot.

I checked in Synaptic: It seems that the "gnome-about" package is not installed. It seems that gnome-about should be installed by default in the xubuntu installation, since it's attempting to use it for changing my own password. This could probably be done by making the package that includes "users-admin" depend on "gnome-about-me". I'm not sure how the packaging works...

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Nov 17 17:03:09 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
Package: gnome-system-tools 2.28.1-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
PATH=(custom, user)
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-system-tools
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64
XsessionErrors:
(polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1597): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
(xfwm4:1578): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_window_get_events: assertion `GDK_IS_WINDOW (window)' failed
(xfce4-terminal:3695): Terminal-WARNING **: Unable to load terminal preferences.
(xfwm4:1578): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_window_get_events: assertion `GDK_IS_WINDOW (window)' failed

Tags:

Related branches

lp://staging/~ubuntu-desktop/gnome-system-tools/ubuntu

lp://staging/ubuntu/lucid/gnome-system-tools

Revision history for this message

positivek (anonyhole) wrote on 2009-11-18:

Screenshot-1.png Edit (62.6 KiB, image/png)
Dependencies.txt Edit (4.2 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

Revision history for this message

Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan) wrote on 2009-11-18:

Ouch! Indeed, that was a side-effect of our recent patch that was not expected. The rationale for running gnome-about-me was that its way of changing your password allowed eCryptfs Private directory to be mounted with the new password: see bug 307019. Maybe the best solution for now would be to install gnome-about-me on Xubuntu - I don't think it has many dependencies.

James: How ironical - the more you solve bugs, the more you have to work on them... ;-)

Changed in gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu):
importance:	Undecided → High
status:	New → Confirmed

Revision history for this message

Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan) wrote on 2009-11-21:

Proposal for SRU: either install gnome-about-me on Xubuntu, which will require splitting it from the gnome-control-center package, or update the Ubuntu patch to users-admin so that it checks that gnome-about-me is present before hiding the original password fields. What way sounds the best to you?

Revision history for this message

James Westby (james-w) wrote on 2009-11-21: Re: [Bug 484559] Re: Xubuntu: Cannot change own password because users-admin needs gnome-about-me

On Wed Nov 18 11:37:47 UTC 2009 Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote:
> Ouch! Indeed, that was a side-effect of our recent patch that was not
> expected. The rationale for running gnome-about-me was that its way of
> changing your password allowed eCryptfs Private directory to be mounted
> with the new password: see bug 307019. Maybe the best solution for now
> would be to install gnome-about-me on Xubuntu - I don't think it has
> many dependencies.

I intended to make gnome-system-tools recommend gnome-about-me, but
missed this in my upload, sorry. That would have installed it on Xubuntu,
but I'm not sure if it would have been pulled in on upgrades, I would
have to ask.

We could fix this in an SRU.

> James: How ironical - the more you solve bugs, the more you have to work
> on them... ;-)

Too true :-)

Thanks,

James

Revision history for this message

Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan) wrote on 2009-11-22:

85_user_gnome_about_me_for_password.patch Edit (30.7 KiB, text/plain)

Here's an updated version of Jame's original patch, which used g_find_program_in_path() to check that gnome-about-me is present. If that's not the case, the normal password entries are shown, just like we do for other users than the current one. The patch was written in such a way that updating it was trivial, just adding a condition.

(I hope 'git diff > file' is good for this kind of patch, else that's easy to change.)

The only problem is that Xubuntu users won't benefit from the improvement brought by the original patch, but that's better than breaking everything. In Lucid users-admin should fix this issue more generally anyway.

Changed in gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu):
status:	Confirmed → Triaged

Revision history for this message

Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan) wrote on 2009-11-22:

James: Hmm... For some reason I've received only now the mail with your above comment, which I've completely missed when posting and working on the patch.

Anyway, AFAICS there's still a problem with depending on gnome-about-me: it's in the gnome-control-center package, which would pull in gnome-settings-daemon, gnome-icon-theme, gnome-menus, gnome-desktop-data at least. Are those all used by XFCE too?

Revision history for this message

Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote on 2009-12-16:

lowering settings since that's not something impacting on default ubuntu install and it's easy to workaround

Changed in gnome-control-center (Ubuntu):
importance:	Undecided → Low
Changed in gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu):
importance:	High → Low

Revision history for this message

Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote on 2009-12-16:

the gnome-control-center capplets will not be shipped in different binaries, user-admin should probably fallback in cases where the capplet is not installed...

Changed in gnome-control-center (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Invalid
importance:	Low → Wishlist

Revision history for this message

Cody A.W. Somerville (cody-somerville) wrote on 2009-12-16:

Milan: Can you update your patch so that it only shows the change you're proposing instead of being an updated version of the original patch? ie. Instead of being an update of the original patch, just provide a patch as if the original patch was already applied against the source tree before making your suggested changes.

Revision history for this message

Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan) wrote on 2009-12-17:

#10

If it's just for reviewing purposes, the only changes I added are in:
> about_me_path = g_find_program_in_path ("gnome-about-me");
> show_passwd = (user != oobs_self_config_get_user (OOBS_SELF_CONFIG
> (GST_USERS_TOOL (tool)->self_config))
> || about_me_path == NULL);
> if (about_me_path)
> g_free (about_me_path);
> }

The if() statement was already in place, I added the about_me_path var.

Revision history for this message

Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote on 2010-01-04:

#11

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-system-tools - 2.29.1-0ubuntu2

---------------
gnome-system-tools (2.29.1-0ubuntu2) lucid; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/85_user_gnome_about_me_for_password.patch:
    - Updated to fall-back to using system-tools-backends to change
      active users password when gnome-about-me isn't available
      (LP: #484559)
  * debian/control: Suggest gnome-control-center rather than depending
    on it (LP: #497441)
-- Chris Coulson <email address hidden> Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:43:00 +0000