Comment 11 for bug 43233

Thank you, however that wasn't a support request, but a comment on the bug: I was able to solve that myself for my own system, but I am a true geek. My question is if there exists a workaround which is discoverable by an average user. I am concerned about ubuntu usability.

When you install edgy, you can set up an NTP client, but you can do so without setting a server, and there's no default. You don't notice this since the "select servers" dialog is hidden behind a button, and it's a checklist that is initially empty. This can go unnoticed and you soon find your system, don't know exactly why, a month in the future. This is a current problem in edgy, it seems, from a google search. You discover this, go to clock settings and either adjust time manually or set up the NTP server. You can no longer update your system - and, if you don't know how to enter a text-mode console, things won't be fixed up even when rebooting, this is what happened to me, and this should not happen at all. Notice that this bug can happen to every ubuntu newbie, that will no longer be able to use synaptic for example, and that there are two issues involved here, one of which is this bug 43233.

We should have slightly relaxed security checks on a desktop system, ensuring that a member of the admin group can always recover his own system in an easy way, expecially when the damage can be done in an easy way (simply adjusting the clock).

Rebooting the system, for example, should in my opinion reset all of a system state, timestamps and printer queues included. You can't imagine how many printer-queue related problems my 70 years old mother encountered using linux, until she asked me kindly to give her what technicians in her small town only knew about: the OS with the majority market share, that you know about at least for the #1 bug in ubuntu.

So my solution for the bug is: make sudo -k work as expected, and make rebooting the system delete the timestamp. If you don't agree I won't get angry :) it's just that I would like to see a linux distribution that my mother can really use, and this is still not the case with my favourite one.

Sorry for long comments I sometimes leave on launchpad, that might be considered inappropriate, but I feel that what is considered a bug or a feature can be changed only by explaining reasons and use cases, so I attach those reasons to the bug itself. In fact, that sudo -k doesn't work can be considered a feature on a server, I understand this.