Bugzilla – Bug 119706
g-v-m on multiuser systems
Last modified: 2008-04-06 22:36:33 UTC
If Joe is running GNOME at the physical machine and Bob is at a remote terminal also running GNOME off of the same machine, then it is possible that Bob's g-v-m will get the hotplug event for Joe's iPod (or any other device) and thus mount it instead of Joe's g-v-m mounting it. This probably isn't desirable. This could probably be solved by having the administrator disable g-v-m for the remote accounts, but I suppose g-v-m should also have some smarts bout this too. Unfortunately I have not been able to come up with any sure-fire way of implementing this... the only way I could come up with was to check the DisplayName and check that the server is '0'. If so, most often it will be safe to assume that that is the user sitting at the physical machine. But this doesn't have to be the case I don't think? It's just that it's most probable. Anyways, current CVS g-v-m has my "fix" for this altho like I said, it relies on an assumption.
In another scenario, both Bob and Joe share the same machine. Bob was logged first, then locked his session and Joe opened new session.
For two local users events should be catched by the user, who owns active virtual terminal. In another scenario (often used in my home), one user (even logged from remote session) wants to catch all media events, and another (even local) doesn't want. Having a chance to decide, which user is a current "media master" would be nice. And in ideal case, remote user can want to catch events from display host machine, mount media to display host machine but make them visible in GNOME, and even use sound on remote machine. But it is another story.
This is something to solve for post SLED 10.
Will be solved with PolicyKit/ConsoleKit in openSUSE 11.0 (and SLED 11).
Is this something that should work now (openSUSE 11.0, A3)?
I just tried this; User A is logged on and mount a USB drive. User B logs on to the same system and tried to unmount that drive. He will get a message saying that he's not allowed to unmount a drive that another user mounted. He can still do it if he enters the root password. Looks to me as if this one can be closed.
Ok, closing it then.