GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 475477
gdm autologin could allow root user if AllowRoot=true
Last modified: 2010-06-04 20:30:14 UTC
Hi, Recently, Fedora got a bug report here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=283131 requesting auto login to work for the root user. The user in the report is the only one who uses his home system, and he just needs the machine as a platform for doing numerical analysis in his research field (biochemistry). In his case, he isn't affected by the various problems introduced by logging in as a root user, but is frequently annoyed by having to enter a password all the time to gain administrative privileges as a normal user. May we should allow autologin of root is AllowRoot=true ? Or maybe we should add an option along side AllowRoot and AllowRemoteRoot, which would be AllowAutoRoot or similiar?
Could you identify what code is preventing automatic login for working for the root user?
I mentioned that in the referenced bug report. See comment 1 here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=283131#c1 There is a function gdm_root_user () which returns the username of UID 0. before preforming automatic login, gdm does } else if (d->type == TYPE_STATIC && gdm_first_login && ! ve_string_empty (ParsedAutomaticLogin) && strcmp (ParsedAutomaticLogin, gdm_root_user ()) != 0) { so the last clause of the conditional will return false if the username is root
So, this is similar to bug #336174. It might be nice if these two issues were resolved at the same time. The other bug has a patch which shows how to modify this area of the code, although that patch needs a bit more work. Basically it sounds like GDM needs a few more configuration options. One to allow the root user, if desired, and the other to allow it to work on other than first login, if desired.
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. However, you are using a version that is too old and not supported anymore. GNOME developers are no longer working on that version, so unfortunately there will not be any bug fixes for the version that you use. By upgrading to a newer version of GNOME you could receive bug fixes and new functionality. You may need to upgrade your Linux distribution to obtain a newer version of GNOME. Please feel free to reopen this bug if the problem still occurs with a newer version of GNOME.