Can not enter password for Administrative tasks using Onboard Keyboard

[Cheri Francis]

Binary package hint: at-spi

When using Onboard keyboard, it is not possible to enter your password for Administrative tasks. When that password window comes up, it greys out and renders useless all other windows, including Onboard.

To reproduce this, open Onboard, and then try to open Synaptic (or anything else that needs an administrative password).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: at-spi 1.30.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-26.47-generic 2.6.32.24+drm33.11
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-26-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Nov 25 09:42:59 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Netbook 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429.4)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: at-spi

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here.

This issue is present in all released versions of Ubuntu and Xubuntu. Due to the authentication window causing the screen to fade out and all other applications becoming unusable, the only way to enter the password is using the keyboard. For those who can not use the traditional keyboard, this makes Ubuntu and Xubuntu completely unusable.

Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Luke, I suppose this means gksu. policykit-gnome doesn't grab the keyboard the same way that gksu does, so I think that the polkit dialog should work fine. Can you confirm?

Do you know how gksu could be changed to grab the focus and keyboard, but still allow onboard to work?

Lowering severity, as this is not a regression; if anything, it gets better over time, as more and more desktop apps are moving towards policykit.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Luke, you mentioned that we could disable the screen locking when a11y is enabled?

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

Ok to make this work properly, you have to go into the assistive technologies preferences, and check the "Password dialogs as normal windows" check box, then onboard should not have a problem entering letters into a password field.

TO be sure, I disabled the above checkbox and was unable to type a password in with onboard when trying to run Synaptic. Enabling this checkbox allowed onboard to work normally.