[7802] in testers
Athena 10 xscreensaver "Log Out" feature
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan D Reed)
Fri Jan 30 10:08:42 2009
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:07:55 -0500 (EST)
From: Jonathan D Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: testers@MIT.EDU
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0901291923200.7400@infinite-loop.mit.edu>
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The "Log Out" feature in xscreensaver has a couple of issues:
1) It gives no feedback when the user clicks "Log Out". Granted, the old
xscreensaver didn't either, but at least the "timeout" progress bar
stopped when you pressed Ctrl-L (or am I misremembering?)
2) It doesn't appear to actually work. After (inadvertantly) leaving
myself logged in for about 36 hours, I tried logging myself out from the
prompt. It appeared to have no effect (didn't even cause the disk LED to
flicker). After 10 minutes of waiting, I gave up and unlocked the screen.
There were a bunch of apps open, including a Nautilus modal dialog, and
the "Renew Authentication" dialog. I wonder if any of them affected the
log out feature.
After using the workstation for a bit, I locked it again and left it
overnight. I came in this morning, and attempted to use the Log Out
feature again. Nothing happened after 5 minutes, so I unlocked the screen
and logged in. After I did that, I was immediately logged out.
However, I can't use the machine again because every time I try to log in,
I get immediately logged out and .xsession-errors says:
>File descriptor 9 left open
> Can't remove open logical volume "login"
>gdm[28301]: ERROR: session_child_run: Execution of PreSession script
>returned > 0. Aborting.
>aborting...
So, something is special here.
Also, should we disable the "Leave Message" feature in xscreensaver on
cluster machines? I can see that being abused.
