Re: non-root accounts & "halt"/"reboot" options when logging out

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

<andrew.macintyre@aba.gov.au>(Andrew MacIntyre) writes:

> I've just installed RedHat 6 (workstation cfg), running xdm.  Its
> intended use is such that I would like to have the users be able to
> shut it down or reboot it as they would a W95 box (it is in fact a
> dual boot with W95), without needing to know the root password.
> 
> Gnome, as installed by the RH6 installer, seems ready to support
> such a configuration, but it only works for the root account.  The
> Gnome user-guide seems to imply that this should work for users as
> well.

It should work. It does work on every RH 6 installation I've
seen. Are you running the default RH 6 GNOME packages?

Note that if you select "halt" or "reboot" as a user,
you will be prompted for the user's password. If you
don't want to require even that, then you can 
edit:

 /etc/pam.d/shutdown

to look like

 /etc/pam.d/xserver

One possibility if things are not working is that 
you've customized the login to the point where the
user is not getting registered as the console user
on the box. (Does /var/lock/console/$USER exist?)

I actually haven't tried testing this with xdm instead
of gdm, but I believe it should work in that case
too.
  
Regards,
                                        Owen