XDM elides whitespace in passwords

[Ron Widell]

I installed the x86 server version of 10.4 LTS, but wanted a lightweight graphical environment, so I also installed LXDE and XDM. The system was connected to the internet through my local network and edge firewall, so I also selected to have updates applied during installation. During the setup I assigned passwords for both the root and normal user. Those passwords had whitespace (specifically, ASCII 0x20) in them.

When setup completed and the system booted into graphical mode, I couldn't login to either the normal nor root account until I switched to an alternate text console, logged in and changed the password so there was no whitespace. After changing the password of the normal user, I was able to switch back to graphical mode and login to the normal user account using the new password.

While in text mode, I had also gone into aptitude and applied all updates available for all installed packages and checked for any broken packages (there weren't any). I did try doing a graphical login after applying all available updates. It wasn't until I used a password without whitespace that login was successful.

[Victor Vargas (kamus)]

Have you tried to reproduce this issue using latest release included in Ubuntu Maverick?

[Ron Widell (r-widell)]

Kamus wrote:
> Have you tried to reproduce this issue using latest release included in
> Ubuntu Maverick?
>
> ** Package changed: ubuntu => xdm (Ubuntu)
>
> ** Changed in: xdm (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
>
No (but I will, and will report back).

Instead, I installed Xubuntu (using the XFCE desktop & GDM). But that
has it's own set of (known) problems wrt to remote graphical login using
VNC, namely that GDM doesn't fully support XDMCP, so no desktop is
created after trying to login remotely (I had the same problem when I
upgraded from Debian Etch to Lenny).

I'll install Maverick in a VM to check, but I'm installing a new hard
drive in the machine that contains all my VMs and since I'm a belt &
suspenders kind of guy, I use the "-cc" option to mkfs, so creating 500
MB partitions takes almost 40 hours each. I expect that it'll be about a
week before I can report back.

ron

--
Ron Widell | Disclaimer, dat-claimer...
<email address hidden> | if she's mine, I'll claim 'er.

[Ron Widell (r-widell)]

I wrote:
> Kamus wrote:
>
>> Have you tried to reproduce this issue using latest release included in
>> Ubuntu Maverick?
>>
>> ** Package changed: ubuntu => xdm (Ubuntu)
>>
>> ** Changed in: xdm (Ubuntu)
>> Status: New => Incomplete
>>
>>
>>
> No (but I will, and will report back).
>
> [...]

I installed Ubuntu-server 10.10 Maverick Meerkat in a VM and after
applying all updates, installed LXDE. LXDE installed it's own display
manager (lxdm), so I treid that first, no joy. It had the same problem
of eliding white space in passwords as XDM under Lucid. I then installed
xdm and removed lxdm.

It worked!

Passwords with embedded white space were successfully parsed in xdm
under Maverick.

I also wrote:
> [...] so creating 500
> MB partitions takes almost 40 hours each. [...]
Oops! Sorry 'bout the massive (3 orders of magnitude) typo.
That's a 500GB partition that takes almost 40 hours to create using the
"-cc" option.

ron

--
Ron Widell | Disclaimer, dat-claimer...
r_widell at bwig dot net | if she's mine, I'll claim 'er.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xdm (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]