I want to share a computer between two people: A and B.
Runlevel is 3, both login on a console, start one's own
X server ("startx -- :0" and "startx -- :1"), and take
turns using the computer, switching between their X servers
with Ctrl-Alt-F7 and Ctrl-Alt-F8. Worked JUST FINE originally.
Unfortunately, starting somewhere in late 2002 (RH8?),
this stopped working perfectly:
the first user to login gets all audio devices assigned to him
(as in "chown A.root /dev/audio...; chmod u+re,go-rwx !$")
so the second user B cannot listen to music and play movies.
I solved this problem by creating a group "sound",
adding both A and B to "sound", and doing
# mv /etc/security/console.perms /etc/security/console.perms.off
# chgrp sound /dev/audio...; chmod g+rw !$
this had to be done after each upgrade.
With FC2, this system was extended to X.
The second user to login can no longer start X!
The "FC2" banner appears, the cursor becomes "x",
but no "small icons" ever appear
(and the server can be killed with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
even though I set DonTZap in /etc/X11/XF86Config).
This happens even after A stops his X server -
B still cannot start his own X session.
Therefore, now FC2 is effectively single-user by default:
A and B cannot share the same computer each having his own X session.
The fixed turned out to be similar to the "sound" one:
rename /etc/security/console.perms and chgrp/chmod some more devices.
Finally (still unsolved): the first user to login has CDs auto-mounted
for him, even if he is away from the computer and the second user is
using it.
Suggestions:
1. there should be a special user group of console users, (similar to my
"sound" group), and all media devices should be owned by
root.<this-media-group> with permissions ug+rw,o-rwx.
this makes /etc/security/console.perms unnecessary.
2. magicdev should detect which virtual console is active and auto-mount
the CD as the user logged on to that console (if nobody is logged on
on the active console, do _NOT_ auto-mount!)
--
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running w2k
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Good programmers treat Microsoft products as damage and route around it.
