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Bug
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Resolution: Done-Errata
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Minor
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rhel-9.4
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tigervnc-1.13.1-11.el9
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No
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Low
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1
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rhel-sst-display-productivity
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ssg_display
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23
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24
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2
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False
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None
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux
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DESKTOP Cycle #4 10.beta phase
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All
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None
What were you trying to do that didn't work?
The VNC service does no start if the configured user has an empty shell field in the password entry, either in /etc/passwd or via AD/IPA/NIS. An empty shell field in the password file is valid, although not common. In this case, /bin/sh is used, as documented in the passwd(5) manual page.
Please provide the package NVR for which bug is seen:
How reproducible:
Steps to reproduce
- Add a local user and use vipw to empty the last field in the password file
- Configure a vnc service using that local user
- Start the service
Expected results
Service should start normally.
Actual results
Service fails a ~/.vnc/<hostname><display>.log contains something like this:
Using desktop session gnome New 'rhel-8-4:1 (vncuser1)' desktop is rhel-8-4:1 Starting desktop session gnome Xvnc TigerVNC 1.12.0 - built Mar 28 2023 04:56:36 Copyright (C) 1999-2021 TigerVNC Team and many others (see README.rst) See https://www.tigervnc.org for information on TigerVNC. Underlying X server release 12011000, The X.Org Foundation Fri Jul 26 10:39:02 2024 vncext: VNC extension running! vncext: Listening for VNC connections on all interface(s), port 5901 vncext: created VNC server for screen 0 xinit: XFree86_VT property unexpectedly has 0 items instead of 1 ** (process:49761): WARNING **: 10:39:02.258: Could not make bus activated clients aware of XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME environment variable: Could not connect: Connection refused xinit: connection to X server lost waiting for X server to shut down ComparingUpdateTracker: 0 pixels in / 0 pixels out ComparingUpdateTracker: (1:-nan ratio)
Additional information
The problem happens because the SHELL environment variable is set by vncsession before running the vncserver script:
struct passwd *pwent;
...
pwent = getpwnam(username);
...
setenv("SHELL", *pwent->pw_shell);
So if the shell field is empty the script will run with an empty SHELL environment variable. In order to prevent this error, the code should be like this:
setenv("SHELL", *pwent->pw_shell != '\0' ? pwent->pw_shell : "/bin/sh", 1);
- links to
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RHSA-2024:130788
tigervnc bug fix and enhancement update
