[users-admin] show all users checkbox is gone and there is no way to view users with a UID of less than 1000

[Michele]

The user-admin dialog in Edgy doesn't show the
"show all users" checkbox anymore, and only the users with UID > 1000 are shown.
I can see how this may be regarded as a "feature", simplifying the interface, but in some cases may be quite annoying.

* test-case (my case): I'm adding a PC to a network with NFS shares; some users over the network have UIDs < 1000, and I need these UIDs to be preserved for NFS to work properly. When I change the pre-defined UIDs, those users are not listed anymore, and I have to edit their properties via console.
* test-case 2: I'm just curious, or want to have a look to the complete list of users in a graphical fashion. users-admin was a good tool for that, when it was able to show all users.

**WORKAROUND:
sudo vi /etc/login.defs
change UID_MIN to 1

this is not very clean, but I guess that if one needs to change automatically generated user-ids, he should also be able to take care not to assign "reserved" userids to normal users.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

I can confirm this, and it threw my father through a hoop yesterday when he migrated our family's old Mandrake Linux computer to Ubuntu. In this case, he tried to create a user named "family" that had the same UID as the previous Mandrake-based "family" user; that UID was 502 (or such) and thus less than 1000. It is desirable to do this when migrating from a "Red Hat-based" Linux distro (i.e., distro that starts with regular users at a UID of 500) because the filesystem stores ownership by UID/GID.

My suggestion would be to, at very least, add a *warning dialog* for the case that the user tries to create a user with a UID of less than 1000. I don't know if this would help for the scenario of the original bug reporter, though.

[Joakim Larsson (joakim-bildrulle)]

I also confirm that this is a problem. I thought I was just ignorant and opened a support case for it: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+ticket/2441 where I got no success so far. The workaround above is not very userfriendly so I figure it is a bug or a re-feature request for feisty.

[Leejpar (leejpar)]

I can also confirm this problem as annoying. All my accounts are setup as 500+ since I was a former Redhat/Fedora user. My file server runs CentOS which is also 500+ based. The user-admin utility should not assume everyone uses uid's of 1000+. Need some flexiblity as before. Please fix this "problem". It should be easy anyway, just put the old users-admin menu back!

[Ethan Lofton (eleaf)]

I agree, I want the ability to show all users again.
This "dumbification" of the gnome UI is starting to get really annoying. Once the gui limits ones ability to do things, it becomes intolerable.

In this end, this ends up making things less user-friendly and usable. Desktop users who also do some graphical system work are suddenly cut off. Gnome no longer has a strong foundation for catering to multiple audiences who want a modern and complete desktop environment.

Hopefully the option is added to show all users, and such 'admin' features are kept in gnome preferences to keep a solid foundation.

Thanks!

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

On Sat, 2007-03-03 at 18:46 +0000, Ethan Lofton wrote:
> In this end, this ends up making things less user-friendly and usable.
> Desktop users who also do some graphical system work are suddenly cut
> off. Gnome no longer has a strong foundation for catering to multiple
> audiences who want a modern and complete desktop environment.

I agree. There becomes a point where you're just making the user
experience worse for those users that *do* have some clue about things
(for example, my father, who came across this problem when installing
Edgy in place of an old Mandrake system). If stuff is dumbed down too
much (for example, to the point that users-admin has been), then I'd be
afraid we're in danger of losing these middle-ground users (like my
father) who are, at present, *probably* the majority of Ubuntu's users,
and -- more importantly -- they are necessary to achieve a stable set of
Average Joe users (e.g., my mother would not be using Linux if my father
weren't there to install and maintain it).

Sorry for the rant.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. Confirming, that's, a bug

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Note that ranting is of no use and don't motivate upstream who often work on their free time on the software to fix the bug. I've forwarded the request: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416619

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The bug has been rejected upstream with that comment:

"According to the users-admin help docs:

"Users list

Shows the available users. depending on the gconf key
"/apps/gnome-system-tools/users/show_all" it will show the system users too."

I basically thought that just a slight minority would want to see system
related users, and those ones would be perfectly capable of changing a gconf
key, maybe I forgot that such users would never look in the help docs :P"

Closing the distribution task, feel free to argue upstream if you disagree

[AndyT (andy-trawick)]

I'm installed Feisty this past weekend and the "Show All Users and Groups" checkbox is not available (shown).

I agree with the documentation (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AddUsersHowto) this is how a user should be
able to see all users and all groups. However the software (Feisty) does not agree with the documentation.

I used the work around to make some basic edits and then reset the value.

I updated the Gnome ticket 416619 to indicate the problem exists in Feisty even though the bug has been closed. I'll test again for this issue when the stable release is out.

[Allan Caeg (allancaeg)]

Any fix? I'm already on Karmic and it will be 2010 in a while. Just kidding. Ranting won't help.

My problem is, on the Login Screen Settings dialog on Karmic, I can't choose to log in automatically to my preferred user account because the only one that appears is the one with the UID that's not less than 1000. Enabling "/apps/gnome-system-tools/users/show_all" and doing

"edit /etc/login.defs change UID_MIN 1000 to UID_MIN 500

edit /etc/gnome-system-tools/users/profiles changing each uid-min=1000 to uid-min=500

edit /etc/adduser.conf LAST_SYSTEM_UID=999 to 499 and FIRST_UID=1000 to 500" from http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3531723&postcount=6

didn't help as well.

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

Note that the problem you describe is more a GDM bug. The gnome-system-tools don't handle the Login Screen at all. You should report a new bug about that.

Other than that, see bug 247910 about showing users with UIDs < 1000 in users-admin.