[Bug 1008344] Re: [Precise] Language selector won't allow me to install languages

[Martin Pitt]

> Nobody sat down and designed the current behavior.

Well, checking "admin" group membership long predates the advent of
polkit. admin group members are still _the_ fundamental definition of an
administrator in Ubuntu; sudo, polkit, etc. all define their privileges
based on that in their default configuration.

So if you created a new group that are admins in the sense of "root",
but is not called "admin", nothing on the desktop will recognize this at
first. This includes language selector, but also things like which
.desktop files are presented in the desktop and which aren't, then sudo,
and a couple of other places which check group memberships. (You already
updated your polkit configuration etc. of course, but that's not
sufficient for everything).

That said, if someone wants to change language-selector to query polkit
for com.ubuntu.languageselector.setsystemdefaultlanguage instead of
checking the group membership , that would be very welcome. It's one of
the few remaining places which still directly uses the groups.

** Summary changed:

- [Precise] Language selector won't allow me to install languages
+ checks "admin" group membership instead of querying polkit

** Changed in: language-selector (Ubuntu)
       Status: Confirmed => Triaged

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1008344

Title:
  checks "admin" group membership instead of querying polkit

Status in “language-selector” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  In a new install of Ubuntu Precise, I cannot make any system-wide
  changes in the language selector (such as installing languages or
  clicking "Apply System-Wide"), only user-specific changes. All those
  controls for system-wide changes are greyed out, although my user does
  have sudo abilities and I would be able to enter the root password of
  the machine.

  The machine is freshly installed, but with customizations specific to
  our site, e.g. ldap authentication for users. Specifically, my user is
  an ldap user, not a local one, and there is a group in the ldap
  directory which was granted sudo capability by adding it to
  /etc/sudoers. My user is part of that group. sudo on the command line
  and gksudo work fine.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: language-selector-gnome 0.79
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.39-generic 3.2.16
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu8
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Mon Jun  4 08:20:04 2012
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:
   TERM=screen-256color
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: language-selector
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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