Re: [gdm-list] Allowing password-less connexions

[Maarten de Boer <mdeboer iua upf edu>]

Hi Milan,

Almost a year ago, I ran into the same problem, and posted the following
solution to the list.

Maarten


From: Maarten de Boer <mdeboer iua upf es>
To: gdm-list gnome org
Subject: login without password
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 12:11:58 +0200

Hello,

Yesterday, I setup my system (Ubuntu 7.04, though I am pretty sure it
is a common issue) to allow password-less login for my daughter. The
gdmsetup utility has the security option for autologin, which almost
does what I want, but not quite.

So I found the gdm.conf option PasswordRequired=false, but this wasn't
enough; I also had to create a file containing the usernames allowed to
do passwordless login, and modify my /etc/pam.d/gdm.conf to contain:

auth sufficient pam_listfile.so sense=allow file=/etc/gdm/nopassword item=user

[...]


On Fri, 02 May 2008 20:17:50 +0200
Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr> wrote:

> Hi there!
> 
> Quite a long time ago, I opened bug 414862 [1] about implementing a
> feature in GDM that would allow to skip password checking for users
> specified in the gdm-setup. This would allow desktop users to easily get
> into their account since they don't really need a password. But at the
> same time we would not lose all security since sudo and PolicyKit would
> still ask for the password for administration tasks, and ssh connexions
> could work too.
> 
> This solution is thus much better than the current 'passwd -d'
> workaround, which doesn't work by default in many distributions. KDM
> already implements this (see the link in the bug report) and many people
> are used to the Windows behavior of no password at all - which is not
> secure.
> 
> 
> I was thinking of helping to implement this in GDM, if you're
> interested. I'd just need a little help to find out what problems can be
> raised by that and where should it be coded.
> 
> If it is just a matter of skipping a PAM check, it should be easy.
> Listing the users allowed to avoid entering their password could be done
> in gdm-setup using (like in KDM) checkboxes, next to the list of users
> to display and to autoconnexion for example. There may be more complex
> solutions if we consider it could be nice to allow gnome-screensaver to
> access the list to avoid locking the screen - but that's further
> thinking. What do you think?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> 
> 1: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=414862
> 
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