gksudo doesn't ask for a password

[brettatoms]

Binary package hint: gksu

If I try to open any of the *-admin apps from the System\Administration menu then I see an item open on the task bar that says 'Starting Administrative Application" and then it eventually goes away.

Trying to run the same application from the command lines with gksudo does the same thing thought I have no problem running them with good 'ol sudo.

---------------------------

$ gksudo -d synaptic
xauth: /tmp/libgksu1.2-cNSVws/.Xauthority
cmd[0]: /usr/bin/sudo
cmd[1]: -H
cmd[2]: -S
cmd[3]: -p
cmd[4]: GNOME_SUDO_PASS
cmd[5]: -u
cmd[6]: root
cmd[7]: --
cmd[8]: synaptic
buffer: -password:-
No password prompt found; we'll assume we don't need a password.
password:

-------------------

If I type anything after this it's just echoed on the terminal and nothing ever happens.

There seems to be quite a few people reporting the same problem in the forums.

This is on a fresh Dapper install. The only thing that is really much different about my system is that all authentication is done across the network from a MS 2000 Active Directory server via winbind/pam.

[Gustavo Noronha Silva (kov)]

This is sudo not respecting the -p option when pam tells it to use another prompt. I'll be happy with any help on how to detect the sudo password prompt in a better way then is done today.

[brettatoms (brettatoms)]

Do you know why sudo is ignoring the prompt? Is it in a format that sudo
doesn't like? Does sudo always ignore the -p option regardless if its
from pam? Could pam be setting the -p option incorrectly? Would a fix
require a patch to the sudo source? pam?

Sorry, I don't know that much about sudo or pam but I'll help if I can.

On Sun, 2006-07-30 at 22:07 +0000, Gustavo Noronha Silva wrote:
> This is sudo not respecting the -p option when pam tells it to use
> another prompt. I'll be happy with any help on how to detect the sudo
> password prompt in a better way then is done today.
>

[Gustavo Noronha Silva (kov)]

The -p option is for sudo; it will replace sudo's password prompt for something; in this case GNOME_SUDO_PASS. If you call sudo -p GNOME_SUDO_PASS ls it must present you that prompt, but if pam tells it to use something else, it will just ignore this. We probably need to patch sudo to respect this while still displaying the pam prompt, maybe?

[brettatoms (brettatoms)]

I get this...

$ sudo -p GNOME_SUDO_PASS ls
password:

If this is meant to print
GNOME_SUDO_PASS:
then sudo's -p option is completely broken.

On Mon, 2006-07-31 at 11:04 +0000, Gustavo Noronha Silva wrote:
> The -p option is for sudo; it will replace sudo's password prompt for
> something; in this case GNOME_SUDO_PASS. If you call sudo -p
> GNOME_SUDO_PASS ls it must present you that prompt, but if pam tells it
> to use something else, it will just ignore this. We probably need to
> patch sudo to respect this while still displaying the pam prompt, maybe?
>

[Gustavo Noronha Silva (kov)]

It is supposed to print that, yeah; the problem here is sudo is giving up the option to show whatever the pam module told it to display.

[bryan (brianhill999)]

I had the same problem on hardy and I found a solution.
Using
$ sudo gconf-editor
I went to /apps/gksu and checked the options "display-no-pass-info", "prompt" and "sudo-mode".