[users-admin] Changing UID needs notice to reboot

[Bryce Harrington]

Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

This is tested against Feisty.

From User settings, go to Properties for the currently logged in user, select the Advanced Tab, and change the User ID to a different number, and click Okay.

It becomes impossible to launch other applications (for example, restarting the User settings dialog). Logging out results in a number of error messages from Gconf and other gnome system tools.

Perhaps the safest behavior would be to prohibit changing the UID of the currently logged in user. The ideal solution would be to delay the change until the next login, but I don't know if gnome-system-tools is set up to do that.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. That's a good point, I've forwarded it upstream: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=395056

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Here's a first attempt at a patch to fix the problem. Also posted on upstream bug.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Comment from upstream about the patch:

"Thanks a lot for working on this issue, however, it should also apply to *any*
logged in user, not just the one who's running the tools, and should guard
against deleting the user, not just modifying it.

IMHO a proper fix would be getting UTMP info (kind of like what /usr/bin/who
does) to know which users are logged in."

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Does this still apply to hardy? Is there a different solution possible?

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

Fixed in upstream 2.27.92, but the upstream watch has not been updated by Launchpad.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Tis should be fixed in Ubuntu 9.10. Thanks for reporting.