xscreensaver troubles

[Edward Glowacki]

Some background info:

I was having trouble with Xscreensaver taking over a minute to
unlock my screen after putting in the password.  I emailed JWZ
about it with what little info I had.  He suggested some stuff, I
fixed the problem, and started to reply back.  Well, I got a bit
sidetracked... ;)  Anyways, I hope you find it funny and not one
of those "you really had to be there to understand the joke" things.
=)

And now the email exchange... ;)

Quoted from Jamie Zawinski on Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 12:59:14PM -0700:
> Edward Glowacki wrote:
> > 
> > Xscreensaver 3.33 (built from FreeBSD ports tree Aug 2)
> > Xfree86 4.1
> > FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE
> > 
> > After typing in my password to unlock the screen, it takes xscreensaver
> > approximately one minute to actually let me in.  In the meantime,
> > it just sits there with my screen frozen.  It's really annoying... ;)
> > 
> > I think it started happening around the time I upgraded to XFree86
> > 4.1.0.  I haven't tried tracking it down beyond that.  Just thought
> > I'd check and see if you had heard of this one before, maybe you'd have
> > some hints on how to fix it, etc.
> 
> Haven't heard of it.  It's probably PAM losing its mind.
> Turn on -verbose -no-capture and see what stderr says about it.


Today's Top News Story:

Firewall accused of breaking screensaver
(August 14,2001)

East Lansing, MI (ED's News Service)

Today in ED's computer, Xscreensaver accused IPFW of "trying to
prevent me from unlocking the screen when requested to do so by my
boss."  Xscreensaver, who works for ED in the same Operating System
as IPFW, is suing IPFW for damages including "lost productivity,
frustration, and mental anguish."

IPFW, a Firewall under the FreeBSD Operating System, claims that
he was only doing his job.  "Hey, I just block packets or let them
through, as I was hired to do," said the Firewall.  "ED told me to
only let SSH and DNS packets through, so fine, that's what I did.
It's not my fault that Xscreensaver was compiled with Kerberos
support.  Try and send a Kerberos authentication through me, and
yeah, it'll get dropped on the floor, and yeah, the screensaver
will have to wait 60 seconds until it gives up and tries the password
file.  That's the way life is sometimes.  All it takes is ./configure
--without-kerberos to fix the problem anyways."  When asked to
respond to that statement, Xscreensaver had no comment.

During the hearing, JWZ, the screensaver's creator and expert
witness for the case, suggested that PAM might be causing the
problem.  "PAM is a nice gal, she wouldn't do something like that,"
said IPFW.  ED, who employs Xscreensaver, IPFW, and PAM, agreed,
citing that he had checked out PAM's "configuration" and it was in
"good shape".  PAM could not be reached for comment, but her lawyer
said, "JWZ was right to suspect her.  PAM was there, she had the
oppertunity to do harm, and she did show a few minor signs that
she could, as he put it, 'lose her mind'.  It's just rough to see
someone going through the stress an accusation like this causes."

JWZ also suggested running "xscreensaver -verbose -no-capture".
Xscreensaver agreed, and that's when it was discovered that
Xscreensaver was running with Kerberos enabled.  "Once we had that,
the courtroom calmed down a lot and we just worked to find a
resolution to the problem," said ED.

Later this afternoon, ED helped Xscreensaver and IPFW settle on a
mutually acceptable solution.  IPFW would retain its job as Firewall
with its current responsibilities, but it would "allow Kerberos to
pass when requested."  ED had Xscreensaver recompiled --without-kerberos
to lessen the set of circumstances when IPFW would be put in such
a position again.

ED commented after the hearing, "I'm just glad to be able to unlock
my screen again without having to wait that long.  JWZ was a big
help tracking the problem, and the fix turned out to be pretty
easy.  Guess we'll all be OK now after all."

-- 
Edward Glowacki			glowack2@msu.edu
Michigan State University	
"...a partial solution to the right problem is better than a complete
solution to the wrong one." (http://uiweb.com/issues/issue14.htm)