logging out of guest session should notify that data will be cleared

Bug #1270788 reported by Andreas E.
36
This bug affects 5 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
lightdm (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

If logging out from the guest account resets it and clears all data, then the logout dialog should give a hint that all data will be reset and that the user should cancel if he/she wants to save files on a USB drive, or if he/she wants to ask the host/computer owner to copy the files to a persistent location.

Revision history for this message
Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj) wrote :

Thanks for your effort to improve Ubuntu by reporting this issue!

I'd like to mention that bug #435930 is about to be fixed through an info dialog at the *start* of a guest session. Despite of that, I agree that a hint also at logout would be nice, but that's more complicated to fix and probably affects multiple packages.

affects: gdm-guest-session (Ubuntu) → lightdm (Ubuntu)
Changed in lightdm (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Julian Foad (julianfoad) wrote :

Ubuntu deletes the user's data at log-out time. Warning when this is about to happen is the very LEAST we should do.

Warning at log-in time alone is totally insufficient. The user who logs out may not be the one who launched it, and may not be the guest who saved some work in that session, and/or the user may not have paid attention to the warning or remembered it. See the blueprint <https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/guest-session-sane-defaults> for some use cases of this nature.

Please elevate the severity of this bug. It is not just a wish, it is a data-loss problem.

Adam Niedling (krychek)
summary: - loggin out from guest session should notify that data will be cleared
+ logging out of guest session should notify that data will be cleared
Revision history for this message
Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj) wrote :

Well, users who don't pay attention will always run into trouble irrespective of the desktop design.

lightdm, and with that the guest session feature, is included in several distributions, for example Ubuntu with Unity, Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Kubuntu, and I think they may use different software for logging out from a session. Consequently, fixing this bug will probably require changes in several packages, and I don't think lightdm is one of them. (Still keeping lightdm as affected package for now.)

Julian, considering that you seem to find the issue important, would you like to work with it?

("Wishlist" is typically used for new features, and does not imply that a bug is unimportant.)

Revision history for this message
Julian Foad (julianfoad) wrote :

Hi Gunnar.

There are two issues in play. The real issue here is that Ubuntu gives users a session that looks and feels pretty much like a regular session, but then it deletes the user's data without adequate warning. That's a serious design flaw. That bug deserves its own bug report, with serious severity. A set of design changes to fix that bug could include changing the desktop background to something that reminds the user they're working in a temporary session; changes to the file-save and directory-browsing dialogs to remind users that Desktop and Documents and so on are not permanent storage locations, and more. I remember using SuSE Linux a few years ago, and you could log in as root, and the root session was visually distinguished in several ways as a reminder.

The subject of this bug #1270788 is merely a request to ameliorate the real problem by adding a warning at log-out time. This, you can reasonably call a "wish". This isn't the best way of fixing the real problem, it's just one relatively straightforward change that comes to mind that would help a bit. It should be a dependency of the real bug.

Ubuntu is specifically aimed at a general audience. We're lacking human interface design guidelines for session management (the subject of bug #882296), but the Gnome guidelines are relevant and say (at https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.12/hig-book.html#principles-forgiveness ) "In all cases, the user's work is sacrosanct. Nothing your application does should lose or destroy user's work without explicit user action." Logging out is not an explicit action to delete data.

The attitude that users who don't pay attention will always run into trouble is what, for years, made computers only suitable for use by geeks like me (and I guess you too) who (speaking for myself) care more about how the computer works than we do about "real" work. There is no way I would let somebody I care about use a guest session in its current state. If I did, and they lost work in this way, I would vow never to try to get them to use open-source software again.

I'd be glad to help with blueprinting, design review, and testing any proposed design change.

Revision history for this message
Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj) wrote :

On 2014-10-07 16:02, Julian Foad wrote:
> The attitude that users who don't pay attention will always run into
> trouble is ...

It's not an attitude, it's reality. With that said, I agree that the design should be forgiving, but it will never be perfect.

> I'd be glad to help with blueprinting, design review, and testing
> any proposed design change.

That's fine, but you still need someone with sufficient skill to find a proper way to deal with it and write the code.

Revision history for this message
Joe T (joseph-thomson) wrote :

I am glad that Bug #435930 has been addressed, but I agree with Julian that this is still a significant design flaw. Imagine if Microsoft Word displayed the message on launch, "Warning: changes to this document will be lost unless you save it to file before closing Word", and then gave absolutely no warning when closing the document. Ask this question: if an average computer user lost their data because Ubuntu didn't warn at logout, would they blame themselves or Ubuntu? I think the answer is clear.

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