Re: [RFC] Fast-user-switching plans

[Ludwig Nussel <ludwig nussel suse de>]

José Queiroz wrote:
> 2010/5/21 Ludwig Nussel <ludwig nussel suse de>:
> > Daniel Gnoutcheff wrote:
> >> I've been spending some time thinking about how to get N-M to work with
> >> fast-user-switching. Here are some possible solutions that I have heard of or
> >> thought of, presented for review.
> >> [...]
> >> Well, once again, thanks for reading all that! Comments, corrections, better
> >> ideas?
> >
> > 5. (or rather 2b?) Get rid of the user settings concept
> >
> > I always found that concept weird and the wrong way around. Those
> > network connections are not private to some user anyways. So always
> > have all network connection settings system global (ie in /etc). You
> > don't need to store an owner of a connection at all, owner is always
> > root. Use polkit to determine whether a user trying to edit,
> > start/stop network connections etc is allowed to do so. Credentials
> > such as passwords or client certificates could still be requested
> > from the frontend (ie the user that tries to start a connection) if
> > storing them in plain text globally isn't desired.
> 
> I don't agree. Historically, network connections was a system-wide
> resource. But if you start thinking that a 3G connection is a personal
> resource, as personal as a cellphone, you will see that we need a
> better model that the one we use nowadays. This is because any user,
> and any process, may use this resource, without any control.

Sure, you have to trust the computer you plug your device into.

> You can imagine that one user start a P2P download, with some kind of
> client, said, amule, then leaves the machine's console. Then another
> user comes to the console, and opens a new session, without logging
> out the previous one. A classical case of "user switching".
> 
> The he/she plugs in a 3g modem, and start a new connection. As the
> network settings, now, are system wide, the connection stablished by
> the user will be used by the amule process left by the previous user,
> also.

A computer system shared by multiple users at the same time where
every user has to bring his own modem to get the system online? That
sounds rather unrealistic to me.

cu
Ludwig

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