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Re: GUI login screen.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kent West" <westk@acu.edu>
To: "debian-user" <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 23:08
Subject: Re: GUI login screen.


> Hoyt Bailey wrote:
>
> >There are a few things I dont understand about Debians login screen.
> >1.  Root cannot log in on this screen.  Why?
> >
> >
> >
> Security issues.
>
At the expense of being a stupid newbie, what security issues RH and Caldera
both have root on their login screen.  Has the rash of virisus caused a
reconsideration of this.  Not being disposed in this direction or capable of
exploting any security hole I dont understand the problem.

> >2.  The sessions secect drop down menu has: Gnome, Gnome chooser, Debian,
> >KDE, Xsession, Failsafe Gnome, Failsafe KDE.  When you leave Gnome or KDE
by
> >pressing the logout button you are told that you can logout, change
logins
> >or shutdown.  Well I cant figure out how to shutdown other than login as
me
> >and start a terminal su, enter password, and issue the shutdown command.
> >This is too much Cntl-alt-del would be simpler assuming I wanted to go to
> >Windows,  But how do you to go to shutdown -h now?
> >
> >
> >
>
> As a normal user, you don't have permission to shut down. You have to
> reconfigure whatever session manager you're using (kdm, gdm, wdm, xdm)
> and edit the appropriate config file to allow normal users (or at least
> you) to shut down. Figure out which session manager you're using and let
> us know ("ps ax | grep [d]m" should give you a good clue), and then we
> can probably be more specific as to what needs to be changed in what file.
>
> -- 
> Kent
>
On a network I can understand why a normal used cannot shutdown the system,
but a single user should be able to shutdown, reboot, etc, without becoming
root.  This shouldnt be a big problem.  The output of ps ax | grep [d]m
(some day I'll understand that grep command):
380 ?    S    /usr/bin/gdm
391 ?    S    /usr/bin/gdm
392 ?    S    /usr/bin/X11/X:0 -deferglyphs 16 -nolisten tcp vt7 -auth
/var/lib/gdm/:0,xauth
?shouldnt there be only 1 (either 380 or 391) and what does 392 mean.
Regards;
Hoyt




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