vlock <= root cannot unlock

[hanasaki]

Binary package hint: vlock

run vlock as root and then try to unlock
OR
run as a regular user and try to unlock as root when prompted, after intentionally/accidentally, failing to unlock as the user

authentication fails. I am guessing this is due to PAM and the fact that ubuntu does not allow root login on the console. VLock should still work for root.

[Lionel Porcheron (lionel.porcheron)]

Confirming, but I do not see how we could deal with that.

[Frank Benkstein (frank-launchpad)]

vlock uses the "vlock" PAM service, defaulting to "other" as every PAM application does. Just provide an /etc/pam.d/vlock that does allow root to authenticate.

[Lionel Porcheron (lionel.porcheron)]

The problem is if your root account does not have a password (which is by default on Ubuntu). If you do :
$ sudo -s
# vlock

On a standard Ubuntu installation you can not unlock vlock.

[Frank Benkstein (frank-launchpad)]

Then you probably should put something like

# comment out the following line if you have a root password set
# and want to lock as root
auth sufficient pam_rootok.so
@include common-auth

into /etc/pam.d/vlock. That way users will at least be unable to lock
themselves out of their machines using "vlock -a".

[alien8 (fb-alien8)]

Just in case since the bug is still open. Add youself to the unix group vlock and it works as expected using vlock 2.2.2.