Re: user settings service and fast user switching

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 16:43 -0500, Pat Suwalski wrote:
> On 08/03/10 04:24 PM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:
> > As far as I understand, there can be single user settings service which
> > is registered on system bus. How is it expected to work together with
> > fast user switching? E.g. I had to check something under clean user
> > account, so I started second X session and got warning from
> > knetworkmanager that one copy is already running (sure, I knew it) and
> > it cannot be started.
> >
> > Is it a client (i.e. knetworkmanager) issue or general NM design
> > decision?
> 
> I actually just ran into this a few hours ago, playing with nm-applet, 
> cnetworkmanager, and a control program I'm writing myself.
> 
> I'm very much looking forward to the answer to this.
> 
> My current workaround is for my program to alter the system settings via 
> its D-Bus, but that's because I know that for my application it's a 
> single-user system. Actually, the system-settings would probably apply 
> over multiple users, if the applet was allowed to run...

At the moment the applet doesn't support fast-user-switching well.  I
did some work a year ago to help fix that but there was more to do which
never got completed.  Any help on finishing that would be
appreciated... :)

The basic plan was that (2) the applet hook up to ConsoleKit to detect
when it is no longer in the active session, and (2) if it's no longer
active, drop the *system* bus service so that another applet in the new
session could claim the system bus service.

Of course this implies that when switching if your connection is
provided by the applet in one session (ie, a 'user' connection) it is
not preserved over the switch.  Which is what system connections are for
and why the checkbox in the connection editor is called "Available to
all users".

Dan