[Bug 2088433] Re: Problems with tigervncserver copying credential files to /tmp

[Juha Aatrokoski]

Huh, I did not mean to report this for systemd but for tigervnc (only),
but looks like the "Report a bug" link at the top-right of an existing
bug forces the package, even though it later lets you specify the
affected package... Anyway, I guess it's ok now(?)

And yeah, I can fix it for myself but not for others, hence the bug
report. Also, fixing the problem with tmpfiles does not address the
second problem of stale credential files.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2088433

Title:
  Problems with tigervncserver copying credential files to /tmp

Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix
Status in tigervnc package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  (Ubuntu 24.04.1, TigerVNC 1.13.1+dfsg-2build2)

  On startup, tigervncserver (via Wrapper.pm) copies ~/.vnc/passwd (and
  other credential files) into /tmp/tigervnc.XXXXXX directory and tells
  Xtigervnc to use those instead. There are at least two problems with
  this:

  1: On Ubuntu, automatic age-based cleaning of /tmp is enabled by
  default. This is problematic in general (see bug #2088268), but
  specifically the /tmp/tigervnc.XXXXXX directory can get removed. If
  /tmp has the noatime mount option, the removal always happens 30 days
  after the VNC server is started. Without noatime, the removal happens
  if there is a 30 day period without any new connections to the VNC
  server. When the directory is removed, the VNC server becomes
  inaccessible.

  2: If the credential files (e.g. password) in ~/.vnc/ are changed, the
  running VNC server will not pick this up and will continue to use the
  old cached credential files.

  I think there should at least be a mechanism to enable/disable this
  caching behavior via a configuration file (or a command line
  argument). Also, if such caching is done, I think the proper location
  would be under $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR instead of /tmp.

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