timekpr-revived

Timekpr on Linux Mint Rosa KDE 4.14.3 (Mint Display Manager)

Asked by aldicek

My regards to all devs

I tried your software and would like to point out the two most important reasons that led to my decision to uninstall Timekpr for now:

While Timekpr was active and my sons tried to login outside of the defined times, it only threw a wrong login name / password error, which is misleading. So a better way would be not to use this but a personalized message, telling that it's not allowed to (re)log in because:
- allowed time ran out already
- the login happens outside the allowed time span for activities.

Also, there was no message showing up to remind my sons to finish activities during the next x minutes or loosing all unsaved data. It seems that the notification system is not supporting KDE with Mint Display Manager atm. (I read about using it only with LDDM, but when I installed and configured LDDM and Timekpr inside a virtual box test environment, notifications didn't work neither.)

If this could be solved in a future release, I would love to use timekpr again because it seems the most matured package for that business so far.

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timekpr-revived Edit question
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Eduards Bezverhijs
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Eduards Bezverhijs (mjasnik) said : 		#1

Hi,

I have built a new package, currently in beta (timekpr-beta), please check it out whether it solves the problem.
In case it does not, please send me a log files (/var/log/timekpr.log), screenshot of indicator to my e-mail, I'll try to fix it before release. If it's possible, please run timekpr-client in terminal and send output as well.

Currently most active users are asked to test beta, I'm primarily testing standard ubuntu (unity).

regards
Eduards

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aldicek (aldicek) said : 		#2

Hi again, Eduards!

Thanks for your really quick answer.
I tried the new build, it is promising. It tells at least that the login is locked because of system guidelines. (The cherry on the cake would be, if it would tell the reason more detailed, i.e., because login attempt outside the allowed time frame or because the period of use is over. And, by the way, is it possible to make the login time more granular, to allow at least quarter hour time leaps?)

The one thing I'm really missing yet is a notification that warns the restricted user some minutes before the auto logout to avoid data loss. Is this working already in Ubuntu Unity?
To catch the output from timekpr-client, started inside the restricted user session, seems to be too tricky for my restricted knowledge. I stopped the timekpr-client process of the restricted user and restarted it in a terminal window in this session. At least I could see in the terminal output, that there IS a notification provided shortly before the auto logout which is not displayed. How can I catch it?

Cheers
Aldicek

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Eduards Bezverhijs (mjasnik) said : 		#3

Hi!

As for user lockout: unfortunately I can not easily give a user the reason, because user lock is done via Linux PAM, which is invoked when user logins via the login screen which handles that automagically.
I can not influence this w/o modifying login manager or writing a module that does some sort of check, not taking into account that I have no technical knowledge how that works in detail. In short - not worth the time, unfortunately.

As for notifications, there should be notifications about when time runs out, if:
more than 25 minutes left notifications should be every 10 minutes
less than 25 minutes left notifications should be every 5 minutes
less than 10 minutes left notifications should be every 2 minutes
less than 3 minutes left notifications should be every 1 minute

Apparently smth is quite wrong, have not encountered anything like that in. You mentioned that it's KDE with Mint, but which Ubuntu version and DE (version) exactly are You using? Is it self installed components or standard downloadable setup?
I need to get the same setup as You to catch the bug.

regards
Eduards

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aldicek (aldicek) said : 		#4

Hi Eduards,

thanks again for your quick reaction. I see the problem with this login stuff, but as I said, it would be just the cherry of the cake. I can live with the current behaviour quite comfortable.
Now about the used software setup: Its a Mint Qiana KDE 64 bit image (similar to Kubuntu Trusty) inside a Virtualbox, updated to Mint Rosa (similar to Kubuntu 14.04.3), to be as close as possible to the setup of the machines of my sons. The DE is KDE 4.14.3, upgraded via Kubuntu Backports PPA.
This evening I will try to hardcopy the terminal output that tells the errors. In short, the python script can't find a token called "bus" which leads to no notification. Similar happens when I click on the top item of the context menu of the desktop client (probably something like "Show remaining time...").

best regards
Aldicek

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Best Eduards Bezverhijs (mjasnik) said : 		#5

Hi!

I probably tracked down the problem, I'll make a new beta release soon (should be ready after an about one hour) please install the latest build (ubuntu4 release) and try again.

regards
Eduards

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aldicek (aldicek) said : 		#6

Hi again!

Thanks to your great work, now I see notifications, thanks for that. I installed this beta to the machines of my sons and tried it after testing in the VirtualBox. It now works as expected.
Great job, thanks for that, Eduards!

Cheers
Aldicek

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aldicek (aldicek) said : 		#7

Thanks Eduards Bezverhijs, that solved my question.