Re: [RFC] Fast-user-switching plans

[José Queiroz <zekkerj gmail com>]

2010/5/21 Ludwig Nussel <ludwig nussel suse de>:
> Daniel Gnoutcheff wrote:
>> I've been spending some time thinking about how to get N-M to work with
>> fast-user-switching. Here are some possible solutions that I have heard of or
>> thought of, presented for review.
>> [...]
>> Well, once again, thanks for reading all that! Comments, corrections, better
>> ideas?
>
> 5. (or rather 2b?) Get rid of the user settings concept
>
> I always found that concept weird and the wrong way around. Those
> network connections are not private to some user anyways. So always
> have all network connection settings system global (ie in /etc). You
> don't need to store an owner of a connection at all, owner is always
> root. Use polkit to determine whether a user trying to edit,
> start/stop network connections etc is allowed to do so. Credentials
> such as passwords or client certificates could still be requested
> from the frontend (ie the user that tries to start a connection) if
> storing them in plain text globally isn't desired.
>
> cu
> Ludwig
>

I don't agree. Historically, network connections was a system-wide
resource. But if you start thinking that a 3G connection is a personal
resource, as personal as a cellphone, you will see that we need a
better model that the one we use nowadays. This is because any user,
and any process, may use this resource, without any control.

You can imagine that one user start a P2P download, with some kind of
client, said, amule, then leaves the machine's console. Then another
user comes to the console, and opens a new session, without logging
out the previous one. A classical case of "user switching".

The he/she plugs in a 3g modem, and start a new connection. As the
network settings, now, are system wide, the connection stablished by
the user will be used by the amule process left by the previous user,
also.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that we need a new model. :-/