Re: [gdm-list] GDM - gdmdynamic and Sun Ray support

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Jerry/Jon:

> The issue with Sun Ray and other thin clients is that there
> is no local hardware and no kernel drivers involved in
> plumbing one into the system. They are strictly network
> connected client so there is nothing to tell something
> like ConsoleKit about.

As has been discussed, Sun Ray clients aren't really devices in
the same sense that other displays might be considered devices.
So this might have some impact on how ConsoleKit should work
when managing Sun Rays.  I'm not sure.

Since Sun Ray devices do not support VT style switching, I
suspect much of ConsoleKit's functionality is probably not that
useful in a Sun Ray context.

A Sun Ray display is basically a display that does not support
virtual-terminal style switching.  For utmp/audit/etc. purposes
it uses a pseudo device /dev/dtlocal as the device.  It is
expected that the display manager (or ConsoleKit) creates this
pseudo-device as a symlink to /dev/null if it doesn't already
exist.  You'll notice that stable GDM currently does this.

ConsoleKit mostly wants to keep track of state information
associated with a display.  It might be possible to tell
ConsoleKit that a Sun Ray device has been attached or removed
and simply allow ConsoleKit to drive how GDM manages this display.
In this approach, Sun Ray would simply notify ConsoleKit of the
new display in much the same way it notifies GDM via gdmdynamic.
If necessary, a "gdmdynamic" wrapper could perhaps be provided
that would call ConsoleKit under the covers.

One thing that isn't clear to me is how you would tell
ConsoleKit what Xserver command to run with a given display.
GDM currently allows you to do some fairly custom things
with gdmdynamic and the [server] and [server-foo] sections
of the configuration file.  So, you can do novel things like
start GDM managing a virtual frame buffer via Xvfb and such
if you want.  It does seem that there needs to be a
mechanism for telling ConsoleKit or GDM that a non-default
Xserver command be used for a given display.  Sun Ray
obviously requires the ability to specify the Xserver command
in a dynamic sense.

Brian


> William Jon McCann wrote On 10/11/07 07:01,:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 10/11/07, Bob Doolittle <Robert Doolittle sun com> wrote:
> >
> > > Thanks Brian.
> > >
> > > Taking a step back, a Sun Ray is just an example of a "Thin Client".
> > > All Thin Clients can dynamically attach to servers and need a desktop
> > > served to them when they do.  gdmdynamic is the interface
> > > used to setup and tear down desktops when needed.  For the purpose
> > > of GDM, I don't want to over-focus on Sun Ray (even though it's
> > > the product I work on), the value of gdmdynamic is (at least
> > > potentially) broader than that, and should remain so.
> > >
> > > Here's a blog entry regarding Sun Ray for home use in case
> > > that's of interest in putting this into perspective:
> > > http://blogs.sun.com/bobd/entry/the_real_definition_of_sun
> > >
> > > There are some interesting announcements coming out soon
> > > which may make in-home use more attractive.
> >
> > I agree that Sun Ray isn't necessarily a special case here.  It is
> > basically a thin-client, remote "seat" that can dynamically attach to
> > the host system.  Right?
> >
> > The question is: how should we dynamically add seats to the system?
> > We haven't quite sorted out the details yet but the current thinking
> > is that you should be communicating with ConsoleKit to create the
> > seat, add the list of hardware devices to it and GDM would respond to
> > those changes.
> >
> > Jon
> > _______________________________________________
> > gdm-list mailing list
> > gdm-list gnome org
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>
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