[Bug 2088433] Re: Problems with tigervncserver copying credential files to /tmp

[Nick Rosbrook]

Ah, I did not realize this was from a Debian patch. Thanks for opening
the bug in Debian!

** Also affects: tigervnc (Debian) via
   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1087925
   Importance: Unknown
       Status: Unknown

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Title:
  Problems with tigervncserver copying credential files to /tmp

Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix
Status in tigervnc package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in tigervnc package in Debian:
  Unknown

Bug description:
  (Ubuntu 24.04.1, TigerVNC 1.13.1+dfsg-2build2)

  On startup, tigervncserver (via Wrapper.pm) copies ~/.vnc/passwd (and
  other credential files) into /tmp/tigervnc.XXXXXX directory and tells
  Xtigervnc to use those instead. There are at least two problems with
  this:

  1: On Ubuntu, automatic age-based cleaning of /tmp is enabled by
  default. This is problematic in general (see bug #2088268), but
  specifically the /tmp/tigervnc.XXXXXX directory can get removed. If
  /tmp has the noatime mount option, the removal always happens 30 days
  after the VNC server is started. Without noatime, the removal happens
  if there is a 30 day period without any new connections to the VNC
  server. When the directory is removed, the VNC server becomes
  inaccessible.

  2: If the credential files (e.g. password) in ~/.vnc/ are changed, the
  running VNC server will not pick this up and will continue to use the
  old cached credential files.

  I think there should at least be a mechanism to enable/disable this
  caching behavior via a configuration file (or a command line
  argument). Also, if such caching is done, I think the proper location
  would be under $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR instead of /tmp.

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