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[Stephen Richards <685215@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"users-admin is _dead_. So don't expect us to work on it anymore. File
bugs against the new control center if there are."

You may consider it dead, but I am sitting here today, nearly a year
later, trying to add users on Ubuntu 11.04 using Users Settings and
having this very problem.   Users Settings is still present on the
Ubuntu System menu and this problem is still there.  For a dead program
it is having a busy afterlife.

While it may satisfy you to enlighten the rest of us that this program
should not be run as root, in the real world where the rest of us live I
am sitting here with a frozen/grayed-out Users Settings dialog as
described in the original post, and wasting my time Googling to find an
answer as to why I cannot proceed.  Asserting on an obscure forum that I
am "doing it wrong" rather than fixing the problem by, at the very
least, adding an informative error message as the original but reporter
proposed, is not only not helpful, it is the opposite of helpful.
Considering that Ubuntu brands itself as the easy-to-use Linux, that
attitude borders on incomprehensible.

And do I need to point out the Catch-22?  You assert that I need to make
users from a non-root account.  How do I create that non-root account IF
I CANNOT MAKE USERS FROM THE ROOT ACCOUNT USING A GUI-BASED PROGRAM THAT
IS OBVIOUSLY THERE FOR THAT PURPOSE?  While the answer may be obvious to
you, there are others on earth to whom it is not.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-system-tools in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/685215

Title:
  users-admin hangs immediately when run as root

Status in “gnome-system-tools” package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

  When users-admin is run as root, whether by sudo, gksudo, or from a
  root shell (started with "sudo su"), it hangs. The "busy" mouse
  pointer (spinny wheel, with the default theme) is shown. The widgets
  in the window are drawn (though the users list is not populated), but
  faded out and unusable. It does not monopolize CPU resources in this
  state. SIGTERM kills it without incident.

  This is on a 64-bit Maverick system (with version 2.32.0-0ubuntu1 of gnome-system-tools). The output of "uname -a" on this system is:
  Linux Apok 2.6.35-23-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 24 11:55:36 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

  When run as a non-root user, users-admin works without problems,
  including when performing tasks requiring it to elevate privileges to
  root while running (e.g. creating a user). And it works fine when a
  non-root user runs it as an alternate non-root user.

  I have also reproduced this bug on a 32-bit Maverick system, as well
  as a 32-bit Natty system (same gnome-system-tools package version).

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
  Package: gnome-system-tools 2.32.0-0ubuntu1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-23.41-generic 2.6.35.7
  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-23-generic x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Sat Dec  4 10:36:40 2010
  ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/users-admin
  InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100406)
  ProcEnviron:
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8
   LANG=en_US.utf8
   LANGUAGE=en_US.utf8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: gnome-system-tools

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