On 2013-06-17 17:51, Bob Proulx wrote:
Chris Capon wrote:
Since upgrading to Debian Stable (Wheezy), the Gnome desktop has a
popup which occurs at least once a day asking for authentication.
The exact message is:
Authentication is required to update packages
This sounds like Bug#708548. This thread on debian-devel is
concerning this problem.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/06/msg00341.html
No resolution yet. But it is a big problem because it is training
people to fall prey to phishing attacks.
Bob
I agree with the bug report. When a user initiates an action (like
launching Synaptic) having a security prompt request credentials is fine
because its intuitive. For system generated actions which just show up
at arbitrary times, there should be a clear way of letting the user know
which software package is making the request. Otherwise, the security is
pointless because the user is simply going to have to guess one way or
the other in the end.
For those with the same problem, I found a solution:
- From the Gnome desktop, go to Activities, Applications, System Tools.
- Launch the icon called "Software Settings".
- Select the "Update Settings" tab.
- Set the "Check for updates" setting to "Never".
- Set the "Automatically install" setting to "Nothing".
Each of the two settings seem to work independently from the other, so
they were both responsible for one security prompt each. Be aware, this
will disable some sort of software update checking by Gnome. The Gnome
update process may possibly be using the PackageKit and PolicyKit
infrastructure, and is also different from "update-manager" (which
doesn't do these security prompts). Very confusing. Personally, I use
a shell script which calls apt-get to keep things simple.
Anyway, thanks to all who helped point me in the right direction.
Cheers.
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