Re: shutdown/reboot and GDM

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 09:51:01AM -0600, Aly Dharshi wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> 	I hope that you are well, I am currently managing machines running RH
> 7.3, 8 and 9. We use Gnome and upon someone hitting the logout button we
> are presented with logout, reboot and shutdown options, is there any
> docs whereby I can disable this for normal users ? 
> 
> 	I have tried using /etc/shutdown.allow and the -a option in the
> gdm.conf file to see if there is any change and set the user to root in
> that file, but no cookie.
> 
> 	Help would be appreciated, I am sure that this is a frequently asked
> question and a redirection to some manual or site is also welcome.
> 
> 	Cheers,
> 
> 	Aly.

Actually this is not gdm doing this, and that's why changing gdm
configuration has no effect.  This is gnome-session execing /usr/bin/reboot
or /usr/bin/halt on exit.  Basically if the users are allowed to run
these two proggies then gnome-session will show the choices.  This
is kind of crap but oh well.  The way to get rid of it is to
whack those two files (they are just links to consolehelper anyway).

You cannot really restrict shutdown rights in gdm, since if a user selects
shutdown from the gdm greeter menu, it will be run as root, so -a will have
no effect.  One sort of dirty way of handling this is by creating a shutdown
session and then running shutdown with the -a option there.  Then users that
are allowed to shut down will 'log in' with the shutdown session and that
will actually shut down the machine.  This may have some weird side effects
though, I'd add a long sleep after the shutdown command there (at least 10 or
so seconds, depending on machine speed).  That way the shutdown will have
chance to kill gdm before gdm starts setting up for a new login that will
never happen.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
                       -- Albert Einstein