[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1008998: pkexec: getting blank lines in a loop on the console

[Simon McVittie]

Control: reassign -1 src:mutter
Control: forwarded -1 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2194
Control: affects -1 + gnome-shell policykit-1

On Tue, 05 Apr 2022 at 19:50:55 +0200, Patrice Duroux wrote:
> I am using a GNOME desktop session (Wayland) and use synaptic(-pkexec) to
> upgrade my system.
> But once, I run it through a terminal and the output was feed by new lines in a
> kind of loop
> while 'sudo synaptic' was not.
> Finally I found that this can be reproduced by any 'pkexec ...' command, for
> instance 'pkexec ls'.

This is a problem with the implementation of the password prompt in GNOME
Shell, rather than a polkit bug as such. The problem is that when you
press Enter to run the pkexec command, the modal password prompt can pop up
before you have released the key; then the terminal in the background
doesn't get the key-release event, so it thinks the Enter key is still
being held down. I think this is a GNOME 42 regression. Upstream are aware
and are looking into it.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2194 and
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/5242 upstream.

    smcv