Running GNOME software as a user other than the session owner

[flint kiva net]

	I'd be surprised if this question hasn't been asked many times before, but 
I couldn't find it in any recent archives, and the development I'm asking 
about is relatively recent.  If I'm running a GNOME session as one user 
(say "abc"), and I want to run a GNOME program as another user on the same 
machine (suppose the second user is "xyz"), how do I do it easily?

	I've found a not-so-easy way to do it.  Apparently xyz needs to be able to 
access /tmp/orbit-abc, or I get something like this:


xyz$ gpilotd
gpilotd-Message: gnome-pilot 0.1.57 starting...
gpilotd-Message: compiled for pilot-link version 0.9.5-pre5
gpilotd-Message: compiled with [VFS] [GOAD] [USB] [IrDA] 
gpilotd-Message: Activating server

** WARNING **: Could not get name service!

** ERROR **: file goad.c: line 1237 (goad_server_register): assertion 
failed: (name_server != CORBA_OBJECT_NIL)
aborting...
Aborted (core dumped)


So we need to give xyz access to /tmp/orbit-abc, apparently.  I changed the 
group of this directory (and all files within it) to a group that has only 
abc and xyz as members, and then changed its permissions to 0750 (and gave 
group readable permissions to the files within the directory).  This worked 
-- xyz was able to run gpilotd.  But the problem is now that abc can't run 
any GNOME programs, even some that xyz can run without the permission 
change:


abc$ gnome-terminal 

ORBit-ERROR **: Wrong permissions for /tmp/orbit-abc

aborting...
Aborted (core dumped)


So once I'm done doing things as xyz, I have to flip the permissions back.  
I could just log out of my session as abc and log in as xyz, but that is 
almost as inconvenient.  Is there a way to authorize another user to access 
GNOME, or to disable that 0700 mode requirement on /tmp/orbit-abc?  It 
seems to me that I used to be able to do this ("this" meaning running a 
GNOME program as a user other than the one running the GNOME session, even 
to the point of putting applets on the panel), more than a year ago, but an 
"upgrade" made it impossible.  Is this the appropriate mailing list to ask 
this question on?  I want an answer, but I don't want to annoy anybody with 
more than one message to an inappropriate list.

	I am running a mostly RedHat 7.1 system with a 2.4.6 kernel and the latest 
Ximian GNOME RPMs.  If anybody needs more information to answer this 
question I'd be happy to supply it.

-- 
Take care,
Tom Lee (flint kiva net)