LiveCD: default user password, lock screen problem

[Chip Piller]

I downloaded and tried the latest dapper liveCD.
I launched a terminal window and the text in the window said "To execute a command as root, run 'sudo <command>' and enter your password.". This is a problem because the user has just booted a liveCD and does not know his username or his password.

Also, in the System menu is an option to "Lock Screen", the mouseover message for this says "Protect your computer from unauthorized use". So I clicked on the Lock Screen menu item and sure enough my screen was locked! When I moved my mouse I was presented with a window that said "Ubuntu LiveCD User" with "ubuntu" in small text under that and a password prompt. I tried no password and also ubuntu as the password, neither was accepted.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Martin: perhaps bash can be fixed to avoid saying "and enter your password" if you have an empty password, as is the case on the live CD.

Tollef: this is another occurrence of the old bug that the screensaver doesn't get disabled on the live CD. I think this is probably already fixed in the not-yet-uploaded casper 1.29, though?

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

we have to find a test for "on the LiveCD"; we cannot find out as a user, that the user doesn't have a password. Any suggestions?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Tollef, what's the easiest and most robust way (which can be done by anybody) to tell that the current system is an Ubuntu live CD?

[Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)]

The live cd now sets a blank password, but gnome-screensaver doesn't allow blank passwords. Reassigning.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

i happen to fail to see any usecase for "locking your screen" if there is no password set ... we disabled the lock screen item in the menu in former live CDs as well as we did disable locking in xscreensaver, what is the advantage of being able to "lock" if there is no password to unlock ? where is the difference to a normal screensaver run without locking ? i'd rather prefer to prevent locking all over in gnome-screensaver if no password is set and just fall back to a normal screensaver run...

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

The bash part of this bug was fixed some time ago, it doesn't mention the password any more.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

we used to solve this in former casper versions with setting the RUNNING_UNDER_GDM environment variable which xscreensaver as well as gnome-screensaver respects, please enable it again

[Chip Piller (piller)]

I tested the latest dapper-live and the "Lock Screen" problem still exists.

[Jonathon Conte (thesicktwist)]

Confirming the bug as it still exists on the Dapper beta live CD.

[Bart Hartgers (bart-hartgers)]

I don't know if this makes sense, but to find out whether the user has an empty password, couldn't you just authenticate with an empty password at start-up, and go from there?

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

I've confirmed on the current daily (2005-05-03) that despite RUNNING_UNDER_GDM=yes being set in the environment, the "Lock Screen" option on the logout dialog still locks the screen.

So apparently gnome-screensaver isn't respecting this after all. Oliver?

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

ogra@edubuntu:/mnt/devel/packages/gnome-screensaver-2.14.1$ grep GDM src/*
src/gnome-screensaver-dialog.c: we have been launched as GDM's "Background" program, then disable
src/gnome-screensaver-dialog.c: if (getenv ("RUNNING_UNDER_GDM")) {
src/gnome-screensaver-dialog.c: *nolock_reason = g_strdup ("running under GDM");

seems that code isnt executed for some reason, i'll look into it

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

 gnome-screensaver (2.14.1-0ubuntu4) dapper; urgency=low
 .
   * added 88_make_RUNNING_UNDER_GDM_work.patch to make the live CD actually
     ignore locking, THANKS KEYBUK for lending an eye to the blind one !!! (closes #30118)

[Chip Piller (piller)]

I tried the current (May 19, 2006) ubuntu daily-live-i386-i386.iso image and found that the lock screen problem is still not fixed.

The fix should prevent the liveCD user from locking the screen if there is no password that can be used to unlock the screen (default initial liveCD condition). This also means that a liveCD user with a password should be able to enable screen locking functionality.

[Debojyoti Pal (n30h4x0r)]

Hi folks,

Till the problem is solved..simply do the following

sudo passwd => set password for root, confirm
su => enter root prompt
passwd pentoo => set temporary password for pentoo user