ubiquity field for user passwords should be wider

Which Ubuntu variant were you installing? The GTK frontend has '<property name="width_chars">12</property>'; the KDE frontend has '<width>200</width>' (which I think is pixels).

Plain old Ubuntu, the GTK frontend. Say, jaunty-desktop-amd64.iso from the ubuntu directory on cdimage. I'm doing this under KVM, so the screen size is not very big, perhaps that matters.

The Kubuntu version of the installer seems to have pretty wide password fields, even under kvm.

This bug was fixed in the package ubiquity - 1.13.0

---------------
ubiquity (1.13.0) karmic; urgency=low

  [ Mario Limonciello ]
  * Mythbuntu Frontend:
    - Explicitly allow the user to progress when the graphics driver is
      selected. For Wubi installs that contain an NVIDIA or AMD graphics
      card, the installer would be stuck on this page because of being in
      automatic mode. This page is not shown on Non-NVIDIA or AMD systems.
    - Be more specific about packages that are removed in role selection.
      Unfortunately prior to this fix, choosing a Frontend role for example
      was not cleaning up mysql, apache, or mythtv-backend (completely
      defeating the purpose of a frontend role).

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * Initially set the extra autopartition options to an insensitive
    state (LP: #362914).
  * Properly reset the 'after' partition bar when switching between 'use
    the largest continuous free space' and 'install them side by side'
    (LP: #364181).
  * Add translation support for the "Free Space" string in the GTK frontend
    partition bars (LP: #365490).
  * Re-enable the alpha intro message.
  * Provide better labels for the partition buttons (LP: #336764).
  * Move the ubiquity icon into the ubiquity-ubuntu-artwork package
    (LP: #322174).

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Strip whitespace from username (LP: #358656).
  * GTK frontend:
    - Fix return value from get_keyboard/get_keyboard_variant if the stored
      default layout/variant is None (LP: #364539).
    - Make create/edit partition mount combo box activate the window default
      (LP: #364564).
    - Widen password entry boxes a bit (LP: #364499).
  * Update imported translations from gtk+2.0 2.16.1-0ubuntu3.
  * Automatic update of included source packages: apt-setup 1:0.40ubuntu1,
    base-installer 1.99ubuntu1, choose-mirror 2.28ubuntu2, console-setup
    1.34ubuntu1, debian-installer-utils 1.67ubuntu1, grub-installer
    1.37ubuntu1, localechooser 2.11ubuntu1, partman-auto 85ubuntu1,
    partman-newworld 21, partman-target 59ubuntu1.
  * Adjust for changes in console-setup 1.34ubuntu1.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 11 May 2009 11:22:35 +0100