Re: dialog madness

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 13:47 +0100, stefan wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I just subscribed for the sole purpose of giving the following 
> feedback. I'm sorry if I bring up an issue that was discussed before.

There's various discussions going on to figure out how to solve this
problem and handle the security implications.  The fixes are on the user
interface side and the daemon side and everyone recognizes that there's
a problem that needs to be fixed.

In the mean time if you like you can
edit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy
and find the sections for
org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.settings.modify.system where you can
change the <allow_active>xxx</allow_active> setting to "yes" to just
allow anyone to edit system connections, or "auth_admin_keep" for
slightly more security here.  Alternatively, there are various
mechanisms to just let PolicyKit think you're an administrator when
you're in group wheel.

The first PK request can be solved by better design of the wifi password
request dialog to only request and show the previous passphrase if you
click a lock button to authenticate and retrieve it.  Since it's a
network secret it's protected and you need admin authorization to get
it; otherwise any user could request the passwords for any system
network connection.

I forget what the second dialog is for.  But yeah, the current behavior
is erring on the side of security and that mostly sucks for the user
experience.

Dan

> I have a poor wireless reception in my room. Now every time the 
> connection is dropped there are two pop-ups: One to ask for my 
> credentials as to authorize change in system settings, and then another 
> one to ask fore the wireless password. Since my connection is dropped 
> quite you can image I've come to hate these pointless pop-ups with a 
> passion.
> 
> My guess is that you cannot decide on a software level if the 
> connection problems are due to a wrong password or poor connection. But 
> that doesn't have to mean that the user is queried evertime there are 
> problems. There could be some flag in the configuration where you could 
> tell Network-Manager that the saved password should only manually be 
> changed. Problem solved.
> 
> If I leave my laptop unattended for a couple of hours I come back to a 
> desktop that is cluttered with tens of pop-ups. This is madness! Please 
> make it stop.
> 
> Cheers,
> Stefan
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