Fabian Rodriguez

A new position for a support analyst based off London has just been opened at Canonical. It’s not listed on the website yet so I thought I’d give some lead to the Ubuntu Planet readers:

• Support Technical Analyst- Corporate Services

I am sorry this is painfully obvious but if you don’t speak excellent English don’t even think about it.

Let me know if you want to apply to any of those, it’s always best when someone has been referred.

And before anyone asks, yes, there is a referral bonus for such referrals - I guess that covers the million questions we get when we help someone apply.

Also don’t miss all the recent job postings:

• Service Delivery Manager - posted: December 2008

Posting Date: December 2008
Job Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Job Summary: Working with key OEM and ODM customers in Taiwan, you will be responsible for the release into manufacturing of Ubuntu and Ubuntu based customized software. You will have experience in the PC industry of launching products for major brands and will be familiar with the engineering life cycles at a …

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• Integration Engineer - posted: December 2008

Posting Date: December 2008
Job Location: Millbank, London
Job Summary: The BIS team is responsible for building and supporting the internal IT systems that Canonical uses. This role on the BIS team involves deployment, support and administration of a variety of 3rd party systems, integration of those systems with other Canonical systems and migration of legacy systems.

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• Ubuntu Senior Certification Engineer - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Your home (given appropriate facilities including broadband Internet) in an American or European time zone.
Job Summary: Hold responsibility for the delivery of manual and automated testing for certification and hardware enablement. Quality Assurance Team Manager

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• Web Developer BIS - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Home based. Some international travel may be required
Job Summary: The BIS team is responsible for building and supporting the internal IT systems that Canonical uses. This role on the BIS team is to develop web applications and components to integrate Canonical websites and applications with other key internal and external systems.

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• Product Manager, Online Services - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Home based with broadband, in an American/European time zone. This job involves international travel several times a year, usually for one week.
Job Summary: Is your head in the clouds? We have a unique opportunity for a dynamic, technically astute product manager who can demonstrate an understanding of the way web-based services change the desktop experience. We’re looking for someone thinking about the cloud, but with feet firmly planted on a product schedule. The …

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• Ubuntu Mobile Developer - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Your home, as long as you have broadband. North American & European time zones preferred. Some international travel will be required.
Job Summary: Our goal is to make the best open source Linux Distribution, your job is to assist in solving issues around creating it. You need to be a jack-of-all-trades, able to quickly determine what the actual issue is and how to solve it, whatever “it” might be. Work on a broad …

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• Ubuntu Mobile/MID QA Tester - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Your home (given appropriate facilities including broadband Internet) in an American or European time zone.
Job Summary: Execute testing cases and tools for the Ubuntu mobile platform.

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• Systems Software Engineer - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Lexington, MA; USA preferred but applicants welcome for home workers
Job Summary: Integration of new hardware devices and technologies on mobile internet devices and subnotebooks. This engineer will have a broad scope of responsibilities to customize Ubuntu to work on mobile internet devices, netbooks and other unique hardware designs

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• Project Administrator - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Home based with broadband, in an American or European time zone. This job involves international travel several times a year, usually for one week.
Job Summary: The Project Administrator role is a key role in our software development teams. As a part of the technical team, the Project Administrator defines and monitors process and progress metrics. Strong communication and a steadfast commitment to not dropping the ball are required skills for this role, as the successful …

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• Web Designer - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Millbank, London; UK
Job Summary: The Web Designer will be responsible for the experience our prospective customers and our developer community have via our Canonical, Ubuntu and other web portals. These portals are critical to the success of our business and our products and our Web Designer will be expected to own this experience from …

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• Lead Concept Designer - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Millbank, London; UK
Job Summary: This is a key role in the Design and Customer Experience team and across the business. Our Lead Concept Designer will be responsible for creating unique, innovative and simply amazing concepts, from customer facing products and the finite detail within, to internal facing projects to ensure the business ‘gets’, buys …

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• Ubuntu GNOME Desktop Engineer - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Your home, as long as you have broadband. Some international travel will be required.
Job Summary: To maintain the GNOME packages that form the basis of the Ubuntu desktop experience.

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• Partner Marketing Manager - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: London, UK
Job Summary: Provide marketing expertise to support and develop business with our growing list of high-profile business partners, particularly major PC suppliers and OEM/ODMs.

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• Telco Channel Manager - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Europe or USA
Job Summary: Channel Manager will be responsible for building commercial relationships with top level Telcos and related industry partners

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• Ubuntu Program Manager - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Preferable London, UK however other candidates home based in American or European time zones may also be considered.
Job Summary: The PM will be managing the implementation project life cycle: requirement gathering, implementation and testing within time, quality and cost standards. Also managing project risk, as well as planning and delivering complex software integration projects; reporting of project progress and status internally, to customers and stakeholders; managing escalations, changing controls …

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• QA Engineer - posted: November 2008

Posting Date: November 2008
Job Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Job Summary: Perform automated and manual testing of custom versions of Ubuntu Desktop. Support local Field Engineering staff with SQA process development/implementation.

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• Gnome Developer - posted: October 2008

Posting Date: October 2008
Job Location: At home with broadband, in an American/European time zone.
Job Summary: As a member of the Desktop Experience Team, this role will be to design and develop new innovative elements of the Gnome platform. The candidate must have strong coding and debugging skills in C, coupled with in-depth knowledge of X11, OpenGL and GTK+ programming. This role will work closely with …

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• KDE Developer - posted: October 2008

Posting Date: October 2008
Job Location: At home with broadband, in an American/European time zone
Job Summary: We’re hiring talented engineers to develop a new, innovative desktop experience, in Ubuntu Linux. You will design and implement key elements of the KDE platform, in coordination with your peers in the community . As a member of the Desktop Experience Team, this role will be to design and develop …

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• Open GL Developer - posted: October 2008

Posting Date: October 2008
Job Location: At home with broadband, in an American/European time zone
Job Summary: As a member of the Desktop Experience Team, the Software Engineer’s role will be to design and develop new innovative elements of the Ubuntu Desktop. The candidate must have strong coding and debugging skills in C/C++, coupled with in-depth knowledge of OpenGL and experience with Linux graphical toolkits. This role …

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• OEM Channel Manager (Europe) - posted: October 2008

Posting Date: October 2008
Job Location: Europe

Job Summary: Based in Europe the OEM Channel Manager will be responsible for building relationships with top level OEM/ODM and local MNC accounts in focus region. As part of the Business Development Department, the OEM programme counts 6 Channel Managers who seek to create a network of partners across the globe with …

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• Launchpad Bugs Application Engineer - posted: October 2008

Posting Date: October 2008
Job Location: Home-based but prefer time zones from Europe to east coast USA
Job Summary: We are looking for a software engineer that is passionate about bug tracking in open source projects. The position requires experience in both web and server-side programming. The ideal candidate has strong experience with other bug tracking systems and a desire to tackle the problem of bug management across a …

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• Field Engineer (China) - posted: October 2008

Posting Date: October 2008
Job Location: China - with regular travel engagements
Job Summary: The application Field Engineer will support deploying Ubuntu and assist in sales opportunities. The continuous improvement and refinement of engineering and technical sales processes is a key aspect in this position. This involves building working relationships within Canonical to enhance the efficiency of collaboration between different teams.

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• Field Engineer (Taiwan) - posted: October 2008

Posting Date: October 2008
Job Location: Home based position in Taiwan, with regular travel engagements
Job Summary: Field Engineer

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• Ubuntu Mobile/MID QA Engineer - posted: October 2008

Posting Date: October 2008
Job Location: Your home (given appropriate facilities including broadband Internet) in an American or European time zone
Job Summary: Develop automated testing tools for the Ubuntu mobile platform.

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• Kernel Field Engineer - posted: September 2008

Posting Date: September 2008
Job Location: Taiwan
Job Summary: The Kernel Field Engineer will support the kernel team with hardware enablement in Ubuntu. This is achieved by working with our partners, system builders, ODMs (Original Device Manufacturers) and development teams within Canonical to assess and implement device drivers and other hardware bring up as necessary. This is a highly …

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• System Administrator in Taiwan - posted: August 2008

Posting Date: August 2008
Job Location: Taiwan
Job Summary: Part of the systems administration team for Canonical Ltd, with specific responsibility for all on-site systems administration related tasks in Canonical’s Taiwan office.

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• Ubuntu Translations Coordinator - posted: August 2008

Posting Date: August 2008
Job Location: Your home, as long as you have broadband. Some international travel will be required.
Job Summary: The role of the Ubuntu Translations Coordinator is to oversee, represent, guide and optimise the processes and workflow of the Ubuntu translations community as well as coordinating the LoCo Teams project. Applicants should have experience of working in a translations community and with computing user groups, be knowledgeable of the …

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• Salesforce Integration Engineer, BIS Team - posted: July 2008

Posting Date: July 2008
Job Location: At home with broadband. This job involves international travel several times a year, usually for periods of one or two weeks
Job Summary: The BIS team is responsible for building and supporting the internal IT systems that Canonical uses. This role on the BIS team involves design and implementation of custom Salesforce integrations and add-ons.

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The Direct2Dell blog is a great way to find out about new Ubuntu development and products at Dell from a reliable source one can actually quote publically
From my seat on the support side of things, I used to worry about such exposure - how can you give tech support to so many new Ubuntu users ? Granted, this is only but a small fraction of Dell’s business, but it is growing fast in many ways (and countries, as seen below). Many vendors understand the need to build their own support infrastructure and knowledge, not much new in that area. But being able to do so in your local language, in different markets, taking advantage of all the freedom LInux and in general Ubuntu offers is a huge new bonus. You get to decide if/when you need professional services (from Canonical or else) and you set the speed for that.

This ranges from pre-installing and supporting Ubuntu on certified servers to selling and supporting a boxed edition that includes 60 days support for $19.99 at Best Buy.

In Dell’s case, having part of their Linux wiki dedicated to Ubuntu and even forums and mailing lists means such initiatives have all the chances to success as Ubuntu’s strong community can complement all efforts from Dell and give traction to them. I also see how Ubuntu’s philosophy slowly infiltrates such offerings
From the blog post (emphasis mine):

Today we’re rolling out two new laptops and desktops that are designed to meet the specific needs of small businesses, government and educational facilities operating on a limited budget in the worlds top emerging markets. Take a look at either Steve Felice’s post or Kara Krautter’s post on the Small Business blog for a bit more context on that front.

Note: Click on any of the images in these post to see larger versions of them. You can also see these photos and more by viewing this photo set at the main Dell Flickr page.

One thing of interest to a lot of our readers is that we will offer Ubuntu Linux as an option on all four of these machines worldwide. Regular readers of Direct2Dell know that we already support Ubuntu on select systems several countries.

These new Vostro systems will be introduced in more than 20 countries over the coming months—including Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. They will be available primarily through authorized channel partners worldwide and also directly from Dell. Pricing for the products will vary by configuration, region and country. Additional Vostro products designed for emerging markets and high-growth economies will be introduced in the coming months.

As per FACIL’s press release:

Massive proprietary software purchases without any invitations to tender
FACIL contests government practices in the Superior Court

Montreal, August 28th 2008 - FACIL, a non-profit association, which promotes the collective appropriation of Free Software, contests the Quebec government purchasing methods for software used within public administrations. FACIL has filed a motion before the Quebec Superior Court in order to bring an end to these methods which the association believes not to be in the best interest of the Quebec government, but more importantly, not in accordance with the regulation for supply contracts, construction contracts and service contracts of government departments and public bodies (R.Q. c. A-6.01, r.0.03).

In Quebec, access to public markets is the rule while contracts attribution without invitation to tender is the exception. A public market should be transparent, fair and most importantly, open to all. The solutions as well as the propositions must be evaluated objectively on known and accepted criteria. Furthermore, the regulation implies that public markets have to enhance the local economic development as well as the Quebec technologies.

From February to June 2008, FACIL has noticed sales of proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars. These purchases were made for products offered by large multinational enterprises, with no regard to suppliers in Quebec. These purchases hurt the Free Software suppliers throughout Quebec and are an obstacle to the development of Quebec IT enterprises. FACIL contests these methods as the association believes they are illegal and unacceptable.

A strategic Free Software utilization in public administration could create thousands of jobs as well as a significant decrease in software licensing costs. However, Quebec’s public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options.

While most of the developed countries have started, a few years back, migrating their technological infrastructures to Free Software, Quebec’s public administration is far behind. In France, hundreds of thousands of desktops used by civil servants have been migrated. In the Netherlands, the public administration, one of the most modern in the world, has decided to forbid the use of proprietary software in the public sector.

But here in Quebec, despite numerous initiatives, the public administration refuses to communicate and to cooperate. FACIL has decided to bring the matter to court in order for the public market law to be respected.

PRESS CONFERENCE: Friday, August 29th 2008, 10h30 at 7275, Saint-Urbain, Montreal, office 201.

Source: The Board of Directors of FACIL
Email: ca@facil.qc.ca
Contact: Mathieu Lutfy (FACIL President)

I was on the board of directors of FACIL until last year, and I blogged a few months ago about SavoirFaire Linux’s similar initiative.

Apparently this is getting a lot of attention. Hopefully it won’t only be

Also see:

• Quebec governement sued for buying Microsoft software
• Quebec sued for ignoring free software
• La bataille de Québec: ça continue

I just wanted to extended a huge “thank you!” to all of the Ubuntu community Today Ubuntu won the “Best Desktop Solution” Product Excellence Award at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo 2008 in San Francisco, California for a second consecutive year.

From the site:

“Judged by a group of respected industry experts managed by LinuxWorld.com, the LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards recognize product and service innovations by LinuxWorld® and NGDC exhibitors.

Product Excellence Awards are divided into 12 product categories, including a “Best of Show,” that represent major areas of innovation in the Linux and open source community. “

Last but not least, I also want to thank all of my colleagues who were pretty busy at the booth, and of course those taking care of all things Ubuntu in the 22 countries where we have employees - including Zaïd Al Hamami, Kurt von Finck, David Bensimon and Adilson Olveira who fired last-minute comments that helped me put the finishing touches to the Ubuntu Desktop presentation. Cheers to all!

Now off to that FSF Pizza Party!

I’ll be at Linux World Expo 2008 next week in San Francisco with Canonical, and as such I am putting the final touches to several demos including one about what is different / new / “better” in Ubuntu 8.04 (specifically) on the desktop. I am talking about technical features, so I thought I’d ask around in case we missed the usual suspects. Here are some that made it into my short list for now, but I’d love to hear other ideas:

1. Easy and fast to try, install, use and upgrade: Wubi, LiveCD
2. Free and commercial options for desktop virtualization
3. Recovery options (at boot time in Grub, using bulletproof X…)
4. Launchpad integration in apps (translation, bug reporting…)
5. Desktop effects

I am also looking for any videos or screencasts of interesting uses of desktop effects. Who knows, your video may end up showing off Ubuntu at our booth I started putting together a list of video resources on the wiki, feel free to add individual links to any you find interesting right there - or simply post a comment here.

Canonical is hiring and the positions list is growing by the day. If you’d like to join a place where IRC is a requirement, colleagues are in almost every timezone, and hacking your home electronics is rather common, check the list and also how to apply.

Contact me if you have any questions.

July 2008 postings

• GNOME Developer, Online Services

Job Location: At home with broadband, in an American/European time zone. This job involves international travel three to four times a year, usually for one week.

• QA Engineer, Online Services

Job Location: Home based with broadband. This job involves international travel several times a year, usually for one week.

• Engineering Manager, Linux Desktop Experience Team

Job Location: Millbank Tower, London; UK preferably

• Web Developer, Business Information Systems

Job Location: At home with broadband. This job involves international travel several times a year, usually for periods of one or two weeks.

• Web Developer, Online Services

Job Location: Home based with broadband. This job involves international travel several times a year, usually for one week

• ISV Relationship Manager

Job Location: The role will involve significant travel, most of which will be in the US and Europe. Boston, London or San Francisco are the preferred locations

• Security Engineer

Job Location: Your home, as long as you have broadband. Some international travel will be required.

• Engineering Manager

Job Location: Your home (given appropriate facilities including broadband Internet) in an American or European time zone.

June 2008 postings

• OEM Channel Manager (China)

Job Location: China

• Graphic Designer

Job Location: London, UK

• Launchpad Interface Design and Usability Engineer

Job Location: At home with broadband. This job involves international travel several times a year, usually for periods of one or two weeks.

May 2008 postings

• Ubuntu Mobile QA Engineer

Job Location: Lexington, MA; USA

• Field Application Engineer

Job Location: Taiwan x 5, India x 1 with regular travel engagements.

April 2008 postings

• Translations Software Engineer

Job Location: At home with broadband, in or near European or Asian timezones. The job
involves international travel several times a year, usually for periods of one or two weeks.

• Release Engineer – Mobile Solutions Group

Job Location: Lexington, MA; USA

• Systems Software Engineer – Mobile Solutions Group

Job Location: Lexington, MA; USA

March 2008 postings

• Ubuntu GNOME Maintainer

Job Location: Your home, given appropriate facilities including broadband Internet.

February 2008 postings

• ISV Channel Sales Manager (United States)

Job Location: Your home with broadband. Some international travel will be required.

• Product Manager

Job Location: London, UK

• Sales Engineer (North America)

Job Location: Your home with broadband (25% travel will be required).

• Field Application Engineer (North America)

Job Location: Lexington (MA), Austin (TX) or Houston (TX)

I got this via FSF Latin America, however it’s beeing reported in a few other places.

The Ecuador Government now has a free-software law and will pretty much mandate that its government uses free, open-source software only. They cite “technology sovereignty and autonomy” and the main concerns, among many others.

The Ecuador Ubuntu LoCo Team is also aiming at becoming official soon… coincidence ? I think not
Alcance libre, EcuaLUG and other sites mention the news. Esteban Mendieta even has an original scan of the signed law! (mirror)

I’ve known about System76 and SUN for a few weeks now, can’t wait to see what other manufacturers will offer Ubuntu Server pre-installed. If you’re in Canada and know about any manufacturer providing such bundles, I’d love to hear about it.

Anne Goldemberg donne sa formation sur les wikis à la Fourmilière de Koumbit… visiblement on a sous-estimé le nombre de participants! C’est un bon problème à gérer, bravo à Koumbit pour l’organisation de ces formations.

J’y suis avec un client dans le domaine de la production vidéo (mon frère!) pour un petit projet d’implantation wiki. Drôle de journée!

It seems more and more laptops come equipped with fingerprint readers lately. If you want to see support for such readers officially rolled into Ubuntu 8.10 by all means click on that mean Brainstorm logo! Update: it seems the Brainstorm voting has closed, however the discussion that entry has about security is worth checking.

I recently got an HP Pavillion xt1000 series with such hardware and while researching its fingerprint support I came across Fprint.

From the project site:

The fprint project aims to plug a gap in the Linux desktop: support for consumer fingerprint reader devices.

Previously, Linux support for such devices has been scattered amongst different projects (many incomplete) and inconsistent in that application developers would have to implement support for each type of fingerprint reader separately.

The provided packages are:

• libpam-fprint - PAM module allowing authentication (login, sudo, etc.) via fprint
• libfprint-dev - fingerprint library of fprint project, development headers
• libfprint0 - fingerprint library of fprint project, which allows using the fingerprint reader found of many of the more decent notebooks
• fprint-demo - fingerprint scan and verification graphic utility

The packages that enable fprint functionality in Ubuntu are provided by Pavel Rojtberg, I’d like to invite anyone with fingerprint readers to try them. If you find any bugs I think they can be sent to the project’s mailing list, I couldn’t find an obvious link to any open bug trackers. Oh, and don’t miss the FAQ!

There is a lenghty discussion and interesting information on Pavel’s site. I contacted him personally and he setup a Personal Package Archive (PPA) to build the Ubuntu packages very quickly! Thanks for you work, Pavel! All the development work the Fprint project has achieved is made available very easily to us Ubuntu users via the PPA service in Launchpad. This will not make it in any official Ubuntu repositories just yet, but it’s very promising so far. Above all it should not be considered a replacement for other standard authentication and security measures.
libpam-fprint + libfprint + fprint-demo packages for Ubuntu 7.10 are available as an archive at:
http://madman2k.net/files/fprint-packages.tar

Hardy Packages are available in this PPA:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/madman2k/ubuntu hardy main restricted universe multiverse
(add that line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file and update your repositories: sudo apt-get update from comand line or just use Synaptic.

For other distributions see: http://www.reactivated.net/fprint/wiki/Download

The fprint-demo package provides a graphical application to enroll fingerprints and set different options. After installing that package, fprint-demo can be invoked from command line only (no menu entry yet) by issuing this command (notice the underscore instead of hyphen):
sudo fprint_demo

In order to enable fprint authentication on Ubuntu install the libpam and libfprint packages and then edit your /etc/pam.d/common-auth so it contains

auth sufficient pam_fprint.so
auth required pam_unix.so nullok_secure

At your next login attempt or sudo command from terminal, this will first try to read your fingerprint before asking your password. For testing purposes, you can expire the sudo passowrd caching by issuing “sudo -k”. Do not try to disable password login completely; this is alpha software and you might lock out yourself.

Example of command-line fingerprint enrollment:
sudo pam_fprint_enroll --enroll-finger 7

For more information regarding the current (under consideration) integration of fingerprint readers support in Ubuntu, see:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pam/+bug/187130