Strange problem with authentication after screensaver lock.

Steve Turnbull steve.turnbull at yhgfl.net
Tue Nov 15 09:11:47 UTC 2005


>
> All who have replied.....I thank you. Perhaps I was not clear enough in
> my original post. I am a big fan of the sudo command and I do understand
> why it is important from a variety of security angles. The only time
> that I would even consider logging in as root would be in the instance
> of a catastrophic failure of the system.
>
> A second reason I like knowing the root password is knowing that
> security of this system resides with me and not whatever algorithm is
> used to scramble the root password on installation. I can be rather
> paranoid about my systems at times.
By default, root is created as a system user, i.e. a user with no password 
(this is not technically 100% correct, but you get the idea)
>
> My question, simply, is why is this simple change of password breaking
> the screensaver, and perhaps kcheckpass? I did not mean to lead the list
> into another potential sudo vs non-sudo argument. I think everyone has
> been down that road.
This means that you have had to create an initial root password (sudo passwd 
root), and then you changed it, correct?? or no??
>
> If I can be pointed to a road that resolves this issue, I would be most
> appreciative. I am willing to be the "guinea pig" that leads to the
> solution.
Try this;

sudo passwd root -l

this re-locks the root password. Now see if you still get the screen saver 
issues.

My thoughts are that this only happened after the root account was affected. A 
*guess* is that somehow the system now sees a root account and the 
screensaver is using this to lock/unlock the system???

Also, I am not sure which package KDE uses for the screensaver/system lock, 
but it could be worth finding out which one it is, then reconfiguring it;

sudo dpkg-reconfigure <package>

Some possible ones are (from an apt-cache search)
kscreensaver - the most likely!!
xscreensaver
xscreensaver-nognome

Steve

-- 
Steve Turnbull

Digital Content Developer
YHGfL Foundation





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