Password-protecting fedora.

[Kevin Freeman]

On Mon, 2004-03-08 at 15:54 -0500, Matt Morgan wrote:

> I don't know how much will help the original poster, but ... does Fedora 
> yet have that tool where you can have multiple people logged in at once, 
> analogous to Windows XP? I have it in Mandrake at home (I think--I never 
> use it). But I forget what it's called.

I am not aware of any GUI tool that does this for Fedora.  Does the
Mandrake tool allow the "switched-to" users to play audio, change
volume, watch TV, use USB cameras/scanners, etc?  If so it would be nice
for someone to port it to Fedora.

It is not hard to achieve a similar effect on Fedora using standard hot
keys.  You simply modify gdm.conf to always start 2 X servers, then
pressing <CTRL><ALT><F7/8> will switch between them.  My PC is set up in
this way so that my wife and I can both use the PC without having to log
out - especially nice when I am in the middle of something and don't
want to log out while she checks email, etc.  My wife actually told me
that she prefers this to XPs design - she just sits down, presses the
keyboard and her X session is there.  i.e.  You don't have to pretend to
log out, then select Switch User from a dialog.

To enable this "feature", edit /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf.  Search for
[servers] and uncomment server 1.  The next time gdm is restarted there
will be 2 X sessions running.  

The down side is that, by default, all hardware except the keyboard and
mouse is "owned" by the first user to log in.  User 2 cannot play music,
use the scanner, etc. without modifying additional permissions.  I
posted a message a few days ago to this list describing how to modify
permissions so that all users can be given access to extra hardware.

Regards,
Kevin Freeman