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I have a different question...I have a different question...Posted Jan 26, 2012 15:25 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203)Parent article: Security processes and the X.org flaw
Why was this functionality removed in the first place? It didn't take long for it to be needed to be restored, mistakes happen and everything appears to have ended well. But that leaves the question of why was it taken out at all? Wasn't it obvious that it was a needed debugging tool and that its security implications were well understood and controlled correctly?
Was it just a part of this seeming craze to 'defeature' everything? Remember the second half of that old addage is as important as the first. Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.
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I have a different question... Posted Jan 27, 2012 1:00 UTC (Fri) by gilbert (subscriber, #81446) [Link]
It was part of a general code cleanup effort, which included a lot of things, not just this particular feature. It's a fairly rarely used debugging feature as there aren't that many screen grabbing applications. Thus, its not surprising that it appeared unnecessary during that cleanup.
I have a different question... Posted Jan 30, 2012 21:25 UTC (Mon) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link]
Almost all X applications use grabs; that's how menus work.
I have a different question... Posted Jan 30, 2012 21:54 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
*Server* grabs are much much rarer (and much more dangerous) though. But, yes, keyboard and (especially) mouse grabs are ubiquitous -- and occasionally a buggy app refuses to let go. Hence the usefulness of a break-it option. And the config options of discourse only let you break keyboard and mouse grabs anyway, not server grabs. There is no such thing as a 'screen' grab in the X protocol, as far as I know.
(Aside: I kind of wish that grabs were time-limited unless clients explicitly lifted the limit. That way, screen savers could lift the limit, and everything else would get sanity restored automatically if they buggily failed to release a grab, rather than ruining everyone's day. What you do if a grab expires is another matter. Send a new event, I suppose: killing the client is too evil and emitting an X error is nearly useless because they're too asynchronous so nobody handles them in any way except to kill the app.)
I have a different question... Posted Jan 30, 2012 23:53 UTC (Mon) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]
> Almost all X applications use grabs; that's how menus work.
Which really sucks, as all keyboard shortcuts (including things like volume keys) stop working whenever there's a popup or menu on the screen. There's no end to how many times this gets reported as a bug:
(2004) https://bugs.launchpad.net/gtk/+bug/10905
etc...
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