Today’s release of Landscape has a major new feature change in the authentication realm: we now use Launchpad to authenticate new Landscape users. Existing users are not affected. Read on for details.
New Front Page Detail
The first visible change is in the front page and affects all users: the password field is gone. This is what we have now:
Just type in your login e-mail as usual. What happens after that depends on whether you are an existing user, or a new user that just got an account.
Existing user accounts have not been migrated to Launchpad Authentication, but new users will start using the new authentication scheme.
Existing Users
Existing users are still using the standard authentication. So, after entering your e-mail at the front page, you will be prompted for your password as usual:
At some point in the future, all users will be migrated to Launchpad Authentication.
If you want, you can do your own migration right now. In your preferences page, you will see a new link which offers this option:
Click on it and follow the instructions to have your account migrated to Launchpad Authentication.
New Users
Users who get accounts in Landscape from now on will be using Launchpad Authentication from the beginning. It will start with the invitation process, which got a few more steps, but it’s all guided and shouldn’t present any problems. Just follow the instructions you get on screen.
These new users, or users who chose to migrate to Launchpad Authentication by themselves, will be presented with a different page after typing in their e-mail addresses in the front page:
Unfortunately, until bug #316796 is fixed, the email address will have to be typed in again. After supplying the correct password, the user will be logged in on Landscape.
This is a major change, and we apologize in advance for some confusion it might create. In the upcoming releases of Landscape we will probably be tweaking this process a bit here and there in response to feedback to try to make it as easy and transparent as possible.