No GUI for disabling guest account access

[ADFH]

Given the tendancy to clone the MacUI, it would appear Ubuntu is missing an equivalent option to disable guest access.

In OS X 10.7, you'll find it in a "Security and Privacy" control panel.

I'm reporting this against LightDM as the file I had to edit to remove it was /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf by adding the line:
allow-guest=false

Not allowing the target audience (people who don't (want to) know how to use the linux command prompt) to turn off guest access doesn't feel right. As it's kind of treated as an account of sorts (albeit temporary), I'd suggest in Ubuntu that perhaps it should be added to the "User Accounts" control panel.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Keeping the issues open against lightdm to catch duplicates, but the solution will need to be in the control center.

[Nathan Hartley (treestryder)]

I would argue that, whether there was a control center option or not, the guest account logon should be off by default.

It only invites trouble. For me, trouble had the face of my children while I was at work. =)

Please consider defaulting that setting to off.

I do not mind so much the option, once I have logged in. (Though my children found that using the guest access while logged into their account, bypassed the proxy settings set in their Firefox profile.)

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

You don't need to be a command line wizard to disable the guest session; copy-n-pasting from the documentation is sufficient.

https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/shell-guest-session.html#disable

With that said, a GUI would be nice.

[Nathan Hartley (treestryder)]

GUI or not, I still argue that "Guest Access" should be disabled by default. It is an unexpected "feature", on an otherwise secure system.

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

@NathanHartley, Though that is a valid point, I think you should file a new issue on that one as this is just about adding an option, suggesting to have it disabled by default is a different matter.

[Nathan Hartley (treestryder)]

Created a separate issue (bug 1568897) for disabling Guest Access by default.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/1568897

[Tim Lunn (darkxst)]

Ubuntu GNOME does not support the guest session, that is a lightdm feature, likewise there is no need for a UI in gnome-control-center since gdm is the default DM.

[AsciiWolf (asciiwolf)]

Any news regarding this issue?

[AsciiWolf (asciiwolf)]

Fixed in Artful by switching to the clean GNOME desktop.