GUI user management

Trekkie00 · December 22, 2020, 10:28am

Yesterday I was quite surprised. I wanted to install a tool which allows to edit user settings graphically. The tool I used to use (kuser) is only provided in an old version which would force to compile a lot of qt stuff (qt4), which I would love to avoid.

yay -Ss kuser
aur/kuserfeedback-git r704.83982f1-1 (+0 0.00) 
    Framework for collecting user feedback for applications via telemetry and surveys
aur/mediawiki-extension-checkuser REL1_35+r2915+g12645d72-1 (+0 0.00) 
    An extension for MediaWiki that allows a user to check which IPs are used by a given username and which usernames are used by a given IP
aur/bukuserver 4.3-1 (+1 0.00) (Orphaned) (Out-of-date: 2020-08-11) 
    Powerful command-line bookmark manager. CLI and server.
aur/kuser-frameworks 16.08.3-1 (+9 0.00) 
    User Manager
extra/kuserfeedback 1.0.0-1 (479.5 KiB 2.5 MiB) (Installed)
    Framework for collecting user feedback for applications via telemetry and surveys

The second alternative (user-manager) can’t even be downloaded from AUR.

yay -S user-manager
:: Checking for conflicts...
:: Checking for inner conflicts...
[Aur:1]  user-manager-git-r274.e74e910-1

:: Downloaded PKGBUILD (1/1): user-manager-git
  1 user-manager-git                 (Build Files Exist)
==> Diffs to show?
==> [N]one [A]ll [Ab]ort [I]nstalled [No]tInstalled or (1 2 3, 1-3, ^4)
==> 
:: (1/1) Parsing SRCINFO: user-manager-git
==> Erstelle Paket: user-manager-git r274.e74e910-1 (Di 22 Dez 2020 11:17:31 CET)
==> Empfange Quellen...
  -> Klone das user-manager git Repo...
Klone in Bare-Repository '/home/wally/.cache/yay/user-manager-git/user-manager' ...
fatal: Konnte nicht vom Remote-Repository lesen.

Bitte stellen Sie sicher, dass die korrekten Zugriffsberechtigungen bestehen
und das Repository existiert.
==> FEHLER: Fehler beim Download des user-manager git Repos
    Breche ab...
error downloading sources: user-manager-git

The third alternative (gnome-system-tools) can’t be installed from AUR either.

yay -S gnome-system-tools
:: Checking for conflicts...
:: Checking for inner conflicts...
[Aur:2]  liboobs-3.0.0-3  gnome-system-tools-3.0.0-6
[Aur Make:2]  rarian-0.8.1-7  gnome-doc-utils-0.20.10+16+gc03cc09-2

==> Remove make dependencies after install? [y/N] 
:: Downloaded PKGBUILD (1/4): rarian
:: Downloaded PKGBUILD (2/4): liboobs
:: Downloaded PKGBUILD (3/4): gnome-system-tools
:: Downloaded PKGBUILD (4/4): gnome-doc-utils
  4 liboobs                          (Build Files Exist)
  3 rarian                           (Build Files Exist)
  2 gnome-doc-utils                  (Build Files Exist)
  1 gnome-system-tools               (Build Files Exist)
==> Diffs to show?
==> [N]one [A]ll [Ab]ort [I]nstalled [No]tInstalled or (1 2 3, 1-3, ^4)
==> 
:: (1/4) Parsing SRCINFO: liboobs
:: (2/4) Parsing SRCINFO: rarian
:: (3/4) Parsing SRCINFO: gnome-doc-utils
:: (4/4) Parsing SRCINFO: gnome-system-tools
==> Erstelle Paket: liboobs 3.0.0-3 (Di 22 Dez 2020 11:22:18 CET)
==> Empfange Quellen...
  -> Lade liboobs-3.0.0.tar.bz2 herunter...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
curl: (7) Failed to connect to ftp.gnome.org port 21: Keine Route zum Zielrechner
==> FEHLER: Fehler beim Download von ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/liboobs/3.0/liboobs-3.0.0.tar.bz2
    Breche ab...
error downloading sources: liboobs

Does somebody have a suggestion which tool could be used. Unluckily yast does not exist in Arch repositories. (Scnr)

I know that this could be done using a terminal, but since I’m using Linux I “insist” on having choices.

anon3337769 · December 22, 2020, 10:44am

user-manager-git hasn’t been updated since 2015.

gnome-system-tools, on the other hand, was updated 2 days ago to change the download source address from ftp to https, so you shouldn’t be getting that error anymore. Maybe resync your mirrors and try again?

Just a hint - when you get an issue with an AUR package, it’s a good first step to check the page for that package; often you will find a solution in the latest comments. Not always, but often.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gnome-system-tools/

Trekkie00 · December 22, 2020, 10:49am

The output I posted earlier trying to install gnome-system-tools is just a few minutes old. I just retried installing when I wrote my first post in this thread. I also tried again right now after refreshing the mirror list (although it is done automatically on a daily basis). It failed again.

Edith says : The problem seems to be liboobs which is supposed to be a dependency of gnome-system settings.

 -> Lade liboobs-3.0.0.tar.bz2 herunter...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
curl: (7) Failed to connect to ftp.gnome.org port 21: Keine Route zum Zielrechner
==> FEHLER: Fehler beim Download von ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/liboobs/3.0/liboobs-3.0.0.tar.bz2
    Breche ab...
error downloading sources: liboobs

Trekkie00 · December 22, 2020, 10:58am

liboobs was also last updated in 2015. I guess chances to get gnome-system-settings up and running are quite limited. Maybe I should give the maintainer of gnome-system-settings some information.

anon3337769 · December 22, 2020, 11:01am

Yes, I see that there was a comment from about a week ago on the liboobs package about it failing to build.

Trekkie00 · December 22, 2020, 11:06am

That’s exactly the comment I saw. Approximately 7:20 pm (12.12.2020).
So maybe one has to wait. In the meantime I take the unpreferred route of installing kuser-runtime. At least on my desktop. On my Netbook I would like to avoid that because of limited space (qt4 takes some space and due to a lack of power compiling the stuff takes quite some time on that hardware).

dodgypast · December 22, 2020, 11:25am

Isn’t a GUI user management tool built into KDE. I know I find one when I type user into the settings search bar.

Trekkie00 · December 22, 2020, 11:44am

You’re right about this. But unluckily it is not capable of changing all the settings needed (e.g. changing groups). It’s functionality is very limited.

Trekkie00 · December 22, 2020, 11:51am

For now I installed kuser-runtime which offers a lot more options. I will not mark the thread as solved because someone might bring up a solution which doesn’t require qt4 to be compiled and thus needs less ressources.
grafik