[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#304350: Always ask for root passowrd twice, even on critical priority installs?

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:30:52 -0400, Raul Miller <moth.debian@gmail.com> said: 

> If so, here's another way to look at this issue: It's a problem in
> the prompting facilities used by debconf.

> In principle whenever debconf prompts a user for type "password", it
> should prompt twice (in other words, any prompting facility which
> treats "password" different from "string" should have been required
> to ask twice).  What we're thinking you should be doing here is
> working around a flaw in the architecture of debconf where this
> doesn't happen automatically.

        Another way of looking at the interface is this: When one uses
 webforms, or windows password utilities -- there are two fileds,
 presented all at once to the user. You enter the password once for
 the first variable, and then you tab over and reenter it for the
 other variable.

        So, don't think of it as entering the value of the same
 variable twice -- it is two separate variables, which, the business
 logic states, need to be identical. You can do this in debconf by
 having _two_ variables -- passwd and confirmation; and the logic in
 the .config file determines if the two variables are identical or
 not.

        This way, you can let each of the two variables continue to
 have defaults (say, if optionally updating the password while
 modifying user profile). I think this better fits the needs of the
 business logic and the current implementation of debconf.

        manoj
-- 
Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after
you need it.
Manoj Srivastava   <srivasta@debian.org>  <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C