Norman Wilson<p><a href="https://mstdn.ca/tags/Linux" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Linux</span></a> nerd complaint:</p><p>In 2017 we discovered a severe bug in the session-starter part of the <a href="https://mstdn.ca/tags/lxdm" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>lxdm</span></a> display manager, which completely breaks Kerberos. The fix is to remove one line of code (a PAM session-end call made at the start of the session, makes no sense at all).</p><p>We use Ubuntu, and I looked in the <a href="https://mstdn.ca/tags/Launchpad" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Launchpad</span></a> bug system and found someone had reported the problem five years earlier, but nobody had diagnosed it fully. I added a note explaining the problem, with a tiny patch file with the fix, and an explanation also of why it was a severe problem.</p><p>We were in the midst of moving to Ubuntu 18.04, so I also just installed a local copy of the binary.<br>The bug was still unfixed in Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04, and I have just discovered that it's still unfixed in 24.04, even though the Ubuntu changelog shows other changes to the package.</p><p>I am going to make a locally-fixed binary again, but the bug has been sitting unaddressed for 13 years, even though I supplied a fix eight years ago.</p><p>I am not happy.</p>