[fprint] Outstanding issues

[Daniel Drake]

Eddie Hung wrote:
> It seems then, as quite a few people have responded in the past - that
> a lot of these problems lie at the application end - the desktop
> environment: GNOME, KDE, etc.

Agreed, but you could probably also put part of the blame on PAM.

> However, I very much get the impression that it would be much harder
> to force anything onto upstream there, than it would be to here, a
> much smaller community whose focus is exactly what I'm trying to fix.

I have some prior involvement in GNOME development and think they would 
be interested in solving these problems. Provided that the existing 
system is sound, I think the missing element usually is someone to step 
up and do the work, which I'm prepared to do.

> For example, gksu has been broken to non-standard PAM modules for
> quite a long time - with apparently, no intention to fix it.

gksu is rather nasty anyway - almost broken by design (i.e. executing su 
or sudo or whatever it does). The new GNOME approach seems to be 
abstracting out root-level tasks into modules and executing them using 
PolicyKit.

So, the fix in that case might be moving any gksu-using application to 
use PolicyKit, and then integrating PolicyKit with the upcoming new 
fingerprint authentication architecture.

> What I would like to do is to patch the things that are broken, as a
> hobby - and have it thoroughly discussed and tested before sending it
> their way.
> 
> Is that something I would be able to do?

Depends on your level of time and interest :)
You could probably start by porting any applications that use gksu 
towards policykit.

Daniel