Snap Store can't install or remove snaps on 20.04 (password prompt issue?)

[Eduardo Aguilar Pelaez]

After upgrading to 20.04 the older App store disappeared and the Snap Store appeared.
However this version of the snap store can't seem to install or remove any snaps.
This seems to be due to a broken step in the user password prompt pop up.
Because the password prompt does not come up the Snap Store does not have the necessary permissions to add or remove snaps.

When I try this in the terminal I need to use sudo

> edu@Edu-laptop:~$ snap remove gitkraken
> error: access denied (try with sudo)
> edu@Edu-laptop:~$ sudo snap remove gitkraken
> [sudo] password for edu:
> gitkraken removed
> edu@Edu-laptop:~$

However as soon as I typed the password and pressed enter the screen flashed and my Brave browser session was killed.
- This seems to be an issue with many instances when the user's password is requested.

Asking for the user's password should not kill apps or the session. This might be related to the screen lock issue ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1866888 ).

Since this is related to user password management I'm flagging it as security related, feel free to downgrade if no risk is present.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Eduardo Aguilar Pelaez (edu-ap)]

Hi Marc,

Thank you very much for your quick response!

Eduardo

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Does re-enabling animations avoid the bug? I am wondering if this is related to bug 1866044.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It sounds like some part of the system has crashed. To help us find the cause of the crash please follow these steps:

1. Look in /var/crash for crash files and if found run:
    ubuntu-bug YOURFILE.crash
Then tell us the ID of the newly-created bug.

2. If step 1 failed then look at https://errors.ubuntu.com/user/ID where ID is the content of file /var/lib/whoopsie/whoopsie-id on the machine. Do you find any links to recent problems on that page? If so then please send the links to us.

3. If step 2 also failed then apply the workaround from bug 994921, reboot, reproduce the crash, and retry step 1.

Please take care to avoid attaching .crash files to bugs as we are unable to process them as file attachments. It would also be a security risk for yourself.

[Eduardo Aguilar Pelaez (edu-ap)]

Thank you Daniel!

Enabling animations again with Gnome tweaks fixed the issue.

In order for this not to impact future users,
- could you and the team please still look into it before the 20.04 release?

Thank you very much!

Eduardo

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1866044, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.