The rationale behind this feature vs. the standard nullok_secure way is
that *you actually have a password*. This means users can be admins,
type their password to use sudo, PolicyKit or lock their screen, but
they are not asked to type it on login. They can additionally connect
over local SSH for example.
There are many use cases for this - if you consider how people are used
to configure their Windows home computers for example: as long as you're
not the only user on the box (-> GDM autoconnect), you are forced to
type your password. So if you want to avoid that without losing all
security, and that you want to be an admin (quite common), you need this
feature.
users-admin has never allowed people to use an empty password because of
security considerations. I've already closed several feature requests
like that. Are you suggesting we should make it easy to use empty
passwords ("Use no password' " button)? I'd find it quite bad, but OTOH
we need an easy way for people to skip this step if they don't want to
type a password.
The current situation can be counter-productive: friends of mine are
using silly passwords such as "xxxx" because they don't care. If we
weren't forcing them to type passwords on login, I would happily force
users to choose a strong password in users-admin, which would improve
security.
So all in all, I see more use cases for this method than for the
traditional nullok_secure option. Dropping the latter wouldn't hurt IMHO
if we can provide a better approach.
--
Update PAM policy to allow password-less logins set up via users-admin
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/393854
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is a direct subscriber.
--
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
