Screen is not locked when it should be

Is "Lock screen when screensaver is active" enabled in the screensaver preferences?

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 17:59 +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Is "Lock screen when screensaver is active" enabled in the screensaver
> preferences?

No (I haven't changed anything in the default install in this respect).

Matt
--
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gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

Functioning as designed.

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 22:28 +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Functioning as designed.
>
> ** Changed in: gnome-power-manager acpi-support (Ubuntu)
> Status: Unconfirmed => Rejected

Just following up on this and including the -devel mailing list for
discussion, as requested on irc.

The issue is this: the screensaver doesn't lock the screen by default,
which sounds perfectly sensible to me (it's annoying to always have to
type your password when the screensaver kicks in while you are still at
your workstation).

However, the result of this seems to be that resuming from suspend and
pressing the laptop function keys result in screen blanking, but not
locking the screen (lock screen from the menu does what it should). To
my recollection, Breezy dealt with this very well, and locked the screen
as it should.

As I see it, there are the following problems caused by this default
behaviour:
 * Machine is not physically secure when resuming/locking screen using
the function key
 * Function key doesn't do what it says on the tin (misleading default
behaviour)

Matthew (G) seemed interested in seeing what others think about this, so
please post your views on whether this is a bug, or not.

Matt

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My opinion is that indeed the screen should be locked when resuming from suspend/hibernation.

Having gnome-screensaver asking you for your password everytime isn't a bad thing either. At my current workplace for instance, we have *very tight* physical access levels yet all machines are configured to ask for authentication when the screensaver is dismissed.

Many actions one performs in Ubuntu also require the user to type in his password. I like a system that asks for passwords. That way users are forced to remember/memorize them instead of having the passwords written in a piece of yellow paper that they leave right next to the monitor.

So yes, I share the opinion that the default configuration of gnome-screensaver should be to lock the screen.

Celso,
But there is an option for this, so as it often happens around here, this is a question of the best default action. :)

I would agree with Matthew that the default action after a suspend/hibernate should be to lock the screen, regardless of g-p-m's screensaver settings.

An example: in a family situation, it is certainly plausible that Dad will suspend the computer, but Daughter will turn it on to use it. She sees the locked screen and clicks Switch User, and away she goes.

As for the misleading verbiage, I wonder if IBM's "Lock screen" simply performs the same thing as (e.g.) my Dell's "Suspend", at least as far as acpi is concerned. With the absence of any further evidence, I blame IBM. :P

Andrew, I just checked g-p-m and there's no screen lock option. When you
put your laptop in suspend/hibernate mode, the first thing it does is to
kick in the screensaver. The screensaver determines if a lock is applied
or not so g-p-m has nothing to do with this.

At most, the screensaver should make some sort of interface available so
that g-p-m can notify it that the laptop is resuming from a
sleep/hibernate state and the screensaver must enforce the screen lock
rule even if it isn't configured to do so.

Reopening the bug. Please can somebody fix gnome-power-manager to lock the screen in the following situations:

 * Laptop lock screen function key
 * resume from suspend
 * close lid

I posted to -devel about this, on mjg59's invitation, the resultant thread is here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-April/017306.html

I can't even find a preference to set this, so this is quite a serious security problem, in my opinion. When you suspend the computer, the screen needs to be locked when resuming for physical security.

NOTE: lock screen from the panel menu works fine - perhaps gnome-power-manager should be using this?

Matt

On Mon, 2006-04-24 at 21:50 +0000, Matthew East wrote:
> * Laptop lock screen function key
> * resume from suspend
> * close lid

The last two of these are fixed by changing the value of
lock_use_screensaver_settings to false by default.

Daniel, can you take care of this? Here's the mandate:

20:12:09 < mdz> mdke: the default is not very important to me
20:12:27 < mdz> mdke: so long as there is a preference
20:12:39 < mdz> mdke: if we can't trivially add a preference, the old
default should be restored

(AFAICS UI changes are out so adding a preference isn't an option)

For the lock screen function button, it seems that the screensaver
should be taking care of this, so it is a bug in something else. I'll
ask around and find out what.

Matt
--
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gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

gnome-power-manager (2.14.3-0ubuntu2) dapper; urgency=low

  * Patches added in this version:
    - 20-enable-xfce-startup.patch
      Enable XFCE in the .desktop file so that it starts up for xubuntu too.
      Closes: launchpad #43077
    - 30-transparent-notification-icon.patch
      Enable the eggtrayicon stuff to do transparency.
      Closes: launchpad #40446
    - 95-lid-state-tracking.patch
      Augment lid state tracking to use hal if hal reports it is capable
      of tracking the lid state.
      If hal reports an acpi_LID with button.has_state == true then we use
      that state information whenever we want to consider the lid switch
      This should deal with LP #33072 and thus its duplicates #42988,
      #42823, #40730, #40662, #37442, #36459 and #33952
    - 96-disable-session-save-on-shutdown.patch
      Disable the saving of the session during critical power shutdown.
      This confuses too many people for now.
      Closes: launchpad #35691
  * Patches changed in this version:
    - 40-ubuntu-schema-defaults.patch
      Alter screen lock defaults to always lock, regardless of screensaver.
      Closes: launchpad #39448
  * Related fixes: #35591 -- We believe this is caused by the hal and
    gnome-power-manager interaction wrt. lid status. The new hal and the
    2.14.3 gnome-power-manager should fix it all.

Thanks. This works now even when the Gnome screensaver has lock screen disabled. One more (or two, actually) bug fixed =)

Is there a way to get around this default behavior? I agree that this is nice for security reasons, but when I am sitting at home, and grab my laptop, it would be nice not to have to type in my password.

In gconf-editor, go to apps/gnome-power-manager and edit the lock-* settings.

Matt

thanks. for those of us used to editing thing like
/etc/default/acpi-support, opening gconf-editor seems strange. oh the
wonders of administration via GUIs.

Matthew East wrote:
> In gconf-editor, go to apps/gnome-power-manager and edit the lock-*
> settings.
>
> Matt
>

--
Patrick Beeson
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/pbeeson/

Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau

I think it wasn't a bug but please change at least the power manager help according to this.

Advanced Prefences under Feisty:
"By default, GNOME Power Manager supports a simple locking scheme.
 This means that the screen will lock if set to "Lock screen" in
 gnome-screensaver when the lid is closed, or the system performs a suspend or
  hibernate action."

But even if you change the doc it is hard for a non expert user to change this since you have to find and change text files. Until this unofficial change it was no real problem imho.

gnome-power-manager (2.20.0-0ubuntu2) gutsy; urgency=low

  * adjust the default gconf paths for our default keys so the defined
    default behavior is the same as in feisty. to address the return of
    LP: #42052 and LP: #39448

 -- Oliver Grawert <email address hidden> Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:16:44 +0200