Bug#832553: Re: base: Create Admin User Password Paradox

[Adam D. Barratt]

Control: reassign -1 gnome-control-center

I believe this report is describing the User Accounts applet from
gnome-control-center, so I'm reassigning it there (and full quoting for
their benefit).

Regards,

Adam

On Tue, 2016-07-26 at 12:28 -0700, Dan Escudero wrote:
> Package: base
> Severity: important
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> I have recently installed jessie on my laptop. Everything was going fine
> until I tried to create a new admin user. When I created this new admin user, I
> selected the "Set password on next login" option.
> This new admin user credential, which had NO PASSWORD set, superceded my
> sudo/root password; when I attempted to unlock the users, the system asked for
> the new admin password (which had never been set!) and would not accept any
> other options. I was effectively locked out of my own admin privileges.
> Failed work-around: I logged out and attempted to login to my new admin user
> account so I could set the first-time password. Upon so doing, the bloody thing
> asks me for a password!!! I spent the next fifteen minutes cursing and reeling
> at the ludicrous paradox I was sure only I could find myself in.
> Successful work-around:
> Step 1: In Recovery Mode (as root): useradd Danny2 --group sudo; passwd Danny2
> [...]
> *** The offending passwordless admin user account had to be removed.
> Step 2: userdel Danny
> Lessons learned: do not click the box that says “Set password on next
> login”. It's a trick.
> 
> 
> 
> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: 8.5
>   APT prefers stable-updates
>   APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
> Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
> 
> Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
> Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
> 
>