Re: [gdm-list] [PATCH] fix race condition when setting the model for the face browser

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Ludwig:

> > > > Could you explain in more detail how the messages pass back and
> > > > forth to support the Face Browser?
> > > Well, you are the maintainer of GDM. Don't ask me how or why it
> > > works the way it works :-)
> > This section of the code was written by the previous maintainer,
> > so I'm probably not that much more familiar with it than you.  I
> > do know that GDM supports a few different mechanisms for communicating
> > between the client and server (e.g. FIFO, SUP, and SOP protocols
> > as mentioned in the daemon/gdm.h file).  Perhaps GDM already has
> > another protocol mechanism that would be more appropriate for
> > passing the face browser data?
>
> No idea.

Well the code has been working reasonably well for users who want
to use the Face Browser.  If someone wants to make the code smarter,
I'd happily accept a patch.

> > > That's
> > > overkill for little gain. IMHO custom images are just a gimmick for
> > > home users which means low number of users and local home
> > > directories. So the most simple way to read the images is to just
> > > access the file in the home directory directly as user gdm. If gdm
> > > is not allowed to access the file then so it be.
> > The problem with making this sort of change is that GDM may seem to
> > break for users if we change this behavior.  You will have to talk
> > me into making a change that will generate a log of bug reports
> > asking why things stopped working.  Can't we think of a way to fix
> > this that would be less likely to break current behavior?
> >
> > Also there may be reasons we're not thinking about why it makes
> > sense for the daemon to poke for these image files rather than the
> > GDM user.  I've reviewed the GDM ChangeLog and docs, but don't see
> > any real explination why it works this way.  Thoughts?
>
> Well, it allows gdm to display files the gdm user is not permitted
> to read. That's the only reason I can think of why you need to be
> root for that job. Maybe some distro has rather restrictive
> permissons on ~ by default?

If you wanted to write a patch that removed the code where the
daemon accesses these files and require that the gdm user has
read access to the user's $HOME directory to show the image files,
then we could float the patch for testing and see what people think
of it.  I wouldn't accept such a patch for GNOME 2.18, but I'd be
willing to put it into 2.19 and see how many people freak out by
the change.

Brian