GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 634811
When using passwordless login, user can never pick session, language and keyboard
Last modified: 2021-07-05 14:16:21 UTC
I am using GDM 2.30.2 and my user is set to login without entering password (this is a PAM setting). So, the user is presented with a list of users to pick from, and as soon as I click on the username, I am logged in. However, options for "Sessions", "Language" and "Keyboard" aren't present until I get to the password entry screen. As I log in without a password, I never do get to the password entry screen and there is no way for me to pick my session. I apologize if this is a setting somewhere - I couldn't find it. Thanks!
This is particularly severe for guest users, which don't have a password.
Problem still exists in gdm-3.0.4. I wonder why this bug is still unconfirmed as it is pretty straight forward to reproduce.
we don't use UNCONFIRMED versus NEW versus ASSIGNED very rigorously
Hello I can confirm this bug with gdm3.2
Description of problem: GDM allows a user to select the session they wish to log into (those under /usr/share/xsessions/ such as GNOME, Xfce, KDE, etc). This option however, only occurs after a user has been selected from the list. Selecting a user would ordinarily prompt for the password, however if a user has no password they are automatically logged in with no chance to choose their session/desktop. This means users also cannot log into a fallback GNOME session via gnome-fallback.session file. In addition, other than simply clicking on the user one can select "Not listed?" and type in the passwordless user's username. This presents a list of sessions, however upon pressing "Sign In" the selected session is reverted to last session and is therefore unsuccessful. This is particularly an issue for Live CDs where the liveuser has no password, but the system might have multiple desktop environments. This may also affect a guest user (xguest?) however I couldn't get this user to show up in gdm so was unable to test. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): gdm-3.4.1-1.fc17.x86_64 gnome-shell-3.4.1-4.fc17.x86_64 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create a user: useradd testuser 2. Remove user's password: passwd -d testuser 2. Install or create another session.desktop file (e.g. xfce-utils) 3. Attempt to log testuser in to a specific session Actual results: User cannot select a session, logs into default (gnome.session). Expected results: User should be able to log into any available desktops.
We should probably show just the session list and say "choose a session to continue:" or something along those lines, and just make enter choose the last session.
That should work nicely - it's only an issue for users with no password, so shouldn't be too annoying. It could go one step further and only provide this list if there is more than one session (which is the current behaviour anyway, I think). Manually entering the username via "Not listed?" _almost_ provides this functionality. You can select a session after typing the username, however this is also currently not working and simply reverts to previous session. Another way might be with a shell extension in GDM, which could be enabled or disabled.
(In reply to comment #7) > Another way might be with a shell extension in GDM, which could be enabled or > disabled. shell extensions don't work in GDM mode, nor in any kiosk mode. This could be revisited, maybe.
*** Bug 701437 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This was presumably fixed by bug 683437 and bug 706607.
unfortunately it's not!
*** Bug 709307 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 696615 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Still present in 3.24
*** Bug 785822 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'm curious to know what would be the design for this, maybe just showing the "Cancel" / "Sign In" screen without any password field? It's true that gives one step more, but if we don't want to add a gear menu on the users list (which imho would work better than having it on the 2nd screen ever for password logins), I think there's no other option.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.