Re: [Usability] User Shut Down damaged PC

["Mark Knecht" <markknecht gmail com>]

On 3/28/07, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
> > Hi Kirk,
> >    I think you have it just about right as far as I'm concerned.
> >
> > a) I don't want to force anyone outside of my responsibility to have
> > to do anything differently than they do today. I understand why the
> > shut down command exists in the System menu and why many or even most
> > people would want it there.
>
> I was going to suggest that tools such as Pesselus might be able to help
> "lockdown" features and help hide buttons such as shutdown.  Even then it
> probably shouldn't hide the shutdown option in GDM.  Thinking about it
> further I realised that when misguided adminstrators tried to prevent
> users from shutting down do and I ended up with a computer that needed to
> be forcibly shutdown I either used the power buttons on the box or
> unplugged the computer at the wall.  Realistically a determined user
> cannot be prevented from shutting down the computer so the best thing to
> do is definately improve the warnings as previously suggested, and also
> make it so that users are more likely to choose logoff than shutdown
> (providing shutdown only in GDM seems like the appropriate way to achieve
> that in your context).

I agree that the shutdown option should not be removed from GDM. While
it's possible to shut a machine down from a remote machine using ssh,
which I do here once in awhile, it doesn't work for single computer
households or when users don't know to ask someone to do this for
them. It's not even friendly to remove shutdown from GDM. What if I'm
not home to do it? That just doesn't work.

Assuming we have removed shutdown from the desktop environment then
the two ideas that do work in my mind are:

1) At least warn users requesting shutdown from GDM that other users
are logged on. I think most reasonable people would then walk around
the house or small office to find out who they are and ask if it's OK
to shutdown. It's not hard to learn to use the 'users' command and go
ask if it's OK with them to shutdown.

2) Make the actual shutdown operation password protected. I'd prefer
to have a 'shutdown' group so that no one needs the root password but
at least my wife and I could prohibit (but not stop) my son from
rebooting.

Thanks,
Mark