[users-admin] Edit groups for user properties

[Corey Burger]

Currently, when you look at the properties of a user, you cannot see or edit
what groups they are in. It would be nice if another tab was added called
"Groups" which would allow this

[Corey Burger (corey.burger)]

Filed upstream:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308686

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

this has been replaced with the "User privileges" tab which has a description
rather than obscur group names. What's wrong with that?

[Corey Burger (corey.burger)]

I have commented upstream (a while ago)

[shaggy (slimshaggy)]

i support/confirm this bug.

"this has been replaced with the "User privileges" tab which has a description
rather than obscur group names. What's wrong with that?"

That tab doesnt show all the groups existing on the system. I can not add myself to the group users.
Showing a description is good, but i think showing the groupname associated is is needed too.

I'd like to have a switch or another tablayer in that dialog. It should switch between "privilege view and group view"
privilege view would be the one existing
groupview would be the same table, but showing all the groups by groupname

regards, Sven

[shaggy (slimshaggy)]

nothing happening :-(

[shaggy (slimshaggy)]

Use case: A user installs VirtualBox. Since the virtualbox driver has this rights:
crw-rw---- 1 root vboxusers 10, 62 2008-08-16 09:15 /dev/vboxdrv
You need to attach a user to the group vboxusers.

This simple task is still not possible within the gnome gui.

[dn (nobled)]

The current workaround is:
1. In users-admin, click "Manage Groups"
2. Select the desired group, and click Properties
3. Check the box next to the user name you want to add to the group

There's still another problem, though: even Manage Groups doesn't list all of the group names on the system. 'video' and 'disk', for example, aren't showing on mine.

[James Bellinger (jfb)]

Yes, this needs to exist.

One benefit we have is that Debian uses usergroups, so groups of a particular user could be available just as a list, and then an 'Advanced' rollout that would be hidden by default (_unless_ the user's group is not of the same name) which would talk about primary group. This would seem very natural. If you still wanted to do the 'Permissions', that could be separate, and the group editing could hide those by default.

Still, one way or another it needs to happen. Very awkward to edit right now, *especially* because groups aren't even alphabetized.

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

Do you have a precise use case for that? Most groups should be covered by privileges, and we can add new ones if needed. Sorting groups by alphabetical order is also planned, that should reduce the need for a per-user list that I'm not sure anybody will ever implement.

[James Bellinger (jfb)]

Any time one is setting up a new user, they want to add the groups for
them. Having to go through two screens is a lot more clicks.
I can't see any reason why if the ability already exists for
privileges, there can't be a Groups tab.

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 8:56 AM, Milan Bouchet-Valat <email address hidden> wrote:
> Do you have a precise use case for that? Most groups should be covered
> by privileges, and we can add new ones if needed. Sorting groups by
> alphabetical order is also planned, that should reduce the need for a
> per-user list that I'm not sure anybody will ever implement.
>
> --
> [users-admin] Edit groups for user properties
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/18351
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The Gnome System Tools: New
> Status in “gnome-system-tools” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Currently, when you look at the properties of a user, you cannot see or edit
> what groups they are in. It would be nice if another tab was added called
> "Groups" which would allow this
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/gst/+bug/18351/+subscribe
>

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

Why would you want to set up groups right after creating an user? The tool is designed to avoid you this painful process, by choosing the default profile. You may need to change profile for an Administrator, but not more.

There can obviously be a group tab, and that's not too complex, but I don't feel like it's the highest priority. So I won't do it myself for now, and anyway it's too late for Lucid. I'd much prefer we find better ways for use cases - most people should rarely need playing with groups anyway.

[James Bellinger (jfb)]

People often play with groups. Suppose someone just got a job, then
they would be in an employee group, a secretary group, blah blah. In
my case it's that I am setting up various servers on a machine. It's
the same as for the "User Permissions", just things that people have
customized themselves.

On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Milan Bouchet-Valat <email address hidden> wrote:
> Why would you want to set up groups right after creating an user? The
> tool is designed to avoid you this painful process, by choosing the
> default profile. You may need to change profile for an Administrator,
> but not more.
>
> There can obviously be a group tab, and that's not too complex, but I
> don't feel like it's the highest priority. So I won't do it myself for
> now, and anyway it's too late for Lucid. I'd much prefer we find better
> ways for use cases - most people should rarely need playing with groups
> anyway.
>
> --
> [users-admin] Edit groups for user properties
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/18351
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The Gnome System Tools: New
> Status in “gnome-system-tools” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Currently, when you look at the properties of a user, you cannot see or edit
> what groups they are in. It would be nice if another tab was added called
> "Groups" which would allow this
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/gst/+bug/18351/+subscribe
>

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

James: Then, please have a look at your /etc/gnome-system-tools/user-profiles.conf. You can create account types there, notably specifying what groups the user should be in (in Lucid only). You can also change the default account type to avoid the need to edit membership manually after creating an user. Doesn't that suit your needs?

[James Bellinger (jfb)]

Interesting.

That'd probably do the job for most cases, yeah. Still, it's not every
time where the group list is identical.
If you look at Windows, they do this same thing with 'Administrator',
'User', etc. but there's also for sysadmins
a tool to edit the user's groups (in Computer Management), because
it's very useful.

-James

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 5:26 AM, Milan Bouchet-Valat <email address hidden> wrote:
> James: Then, please have a look at your /etc/gnome-system-tools/user-
> profiles.conf. You can create account types there, notably specifying
> what groups the user should be in (in Lucid only). You can also change
> the default account type to avoid the need to edit membership manually
> after creating an user. Doesn't that suit your needs?
>
> --
> [users-admin] Edit groups for user properties
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/18351
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The Gnome System Tools: New
> Status in “gnome-system-tools” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Currently, when you look at the properties of a user, you cannot see or edit
> what groups they are in. It would be nice if another tab was added called
> "Groups" which would allow this
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/gst/+bug/18351/+subscribe
>

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

Sure, that can be useful, and that could even replace the Manage Groups button - but since that's too late for Lucid and that I don't plan writing it (for now at least), you may find the user profiles feature quite convenient.