Re: [gnome-flashback] Status of gnome-screensaver and polkit-gnome

[Balló György <ballogyor gmail com>]

2015-08-23 18:02 GMT+02:00 Alberts Muktupāvels <alberts muktupavels gmail com>:

No .desktop file for policy kit? Source is very small, so I could add it to gnome-flashback module... How it is autostarted? What it does? It would be nice to give some steps so I can easily verify if works or not.

They removed the autostart file, and let desktop environments to autostart it when it's needed.[1]

Note that polkit-gnome is still used by Cinnamon and Xfce on Arch Linux[2] and Fedora[3]. Debian also has a downstream autostart file.[4] There is also a request for MATE to use polkit-gnome instead of their fork[5]. So forking polkit-gnome is not the best solution I think.

You could easily test if it works or not when you do something that requires root privileges via polkit. E.g. run the 'gnome-control-center user-accounts' command, and click on the unlock button. If a graphical polkit authentication agent is running, then you'll see a dialog asking your password. Without that, you won't see the unlock dialog, and not able to do privileged actions.

 

GNOME devs don't want that gnome-screensaver is maintained - they suggested to fork/rename to gnome-flashback-screensaver. But in this case I simply better integrate it in gnome-flashback module.

I really hate their decision just because naming issues. We should avoid fork if possible as Xfce[6] (xflock4) and LXDE[7] (lxlock) are still use gnome-screensaver optionally for their screen locking feature. It's even useful within GNOME Shell, because its integrated lock screen works only when GDM is the configured display manager.

[1] https://git.gnome.org/browse/PolicyKit-gnome/commit/?id=47ca445decf21b8de13d804b870d6ce171bad306
[2] https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/xfce-polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop?h=packages/xfce4-session
[3] http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/xfce4-session.git/tree/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop
[4] http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-utopia/policykit-gnome.git/tree/debian/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop
[5] https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-polkit/issues/17

[6] http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-session/tree/scripts/xflock4#n34
[7] http://git.lxde.org/gitweb/?p=lxde/lxsession.git;a=blob;f=lxlock/lxlock;hb=HEAD#l31


--

György Balló

Arch Linux Trusted User