Ubuntu Studio still asks for a password upon bootup even when autologin is selected during installation

[Aaron Rainbolt]

NOTICE: I do not know if this is actually a bug with calamares-settings-ubuntu. It's a possible candidate for the bug's source, so I'm filing this bug against it so I can report it on the QA tracker, but it may very well be in a totally different package.

Hardware: HP Z220 SFF Workstation, 128 GB SSD, 32 GB RAM, 3rd or 4th gen Intel Xeon, UEFI, Secure Boot enabled, installed with encryption.

Expected result: If autologin is enabled at install time, the system should not request a user account password upon bootup but should log into the main user account automatically.

Actual result: A user account password is required even when autologin is enabled at install time on Ubuntu Studio.

Steps to reproduce:

1: Download the latest Ubuntu Studio 22.04.1 daily ISO and flash it to a USB drive.
2: Boot the ISO on physical hardware.
3: Install Ubuntu Studio with your desired settings (I used full disk installation with encryption enabled, no Internet access during installation, however I've also seen this bug with a full disk installation with encryption disabled and Internet access available during installation.)
4: Ensure that you enable autologin when you are entering your user account details.
5: When the installation is complete, reboot into the newly installed system. You will be asked for your user password despite having enabled autologin.

[Aaron Rainbolt (arraybolt3)]

This bug is not a regression in 22.04.1, it also occurs in 22.04.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1984136

[Leó Kolbeinsson (leok)]

Tested Lubuntu Jammy Daily ISO 09-08-2022 trying to reproduce bug.

Test: AWOW NY41 – Int.Cel. J4125, 8GB, 128GB SSD,Intel UHD Graphics 600Dual Band WiFi,Ethernet,BT5.1
Testcase:UEFI+secure boot,encryption,full disk with swap file,Internet and auto-login after install
Looking for bug 1984136 which occurred in Ubuntu Studio (also using calamares installer)
Reboot,enter passphrase,system logon -auto,full disk utilized -/dev/sda2 is LUKS encrypted - 512m swap file ,run Firefox and stream media - all good

Unable to reproduce in Lubuntu.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Leó Kolbeinsson (leok)]

Ran test this time with Studio Jammy daily ISO 09-08-2022 same machine as in comment #3 and can confirm the bug.

Auto-login after install - failed and had to enter password to access desktop as in original bug report.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Per my investigation, this seems to be VERY complicated.

KDE Plasma writes its sddm settings, including autologin settings, to /etc/sddm.conf.d/kde_settings.conf
As far as I can tell, sddm.conf is left blank, but I don't know what is writing it as 'dpkg -S' is silent about it.

As it is, despite https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues/1757, the code was never changed in calamares to allow it to point it to write to a different file *other than* /etc/sddm.conf, therefore it's hard-coded.

It *may* be possible to symlink /etc/sddm.conf -> /etc/sddm.conf.d/kde_settings.conf for an Ubuntu Studio installation prior to other sequences, but this may not be without risks. This may allow for calamares to write to the file properly to allow for autologin.

As it is, this will need testing on Kinetic prior to fixing in Jammy. Please test in Kinetic and report back.

[Aaron Rainbolt (arraybolt3)]

This bug also affect Ubuntu Studio Kinetic, as tested on a GNOME Boxes VM with SeaBIOS.

[Utkarsh Gupta (utkarsh)]

Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that specific release.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Unfortunately, this cannot be fixed for Lunar since Lunar will not have a point release and this is for the installer.