Received Sun 19 Dec 2004 8:31pm +1100 from Sven Luther: > On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 10:58:31AM +1100, Graham Williams wrote: > > Received Sun 19 Dec 2004 5:37am +1100 from Sven Luther: > > > On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 05:35:06PM +0100, Sjoerd Simons wrote: > > > > On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 05:32:26PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > > > > > On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 03:56:42PM +0000, Sam J wrote: > > > > > > Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: > > > > > > >On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 07:03:22AM +1100, Graham Williams wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > At any time on one machine (home machines running Debian > > > > > > > > unstable) I > > > > > > > > allow multiple users to have their X sessions running > > > > > > > > concurrently > > > > > > > > (e.g., on tty7, tty8, etc). I've not yet figured out how to get > > > > > > > > gnome-volume-manager working happily in this situation. > > > > > > > > > My initial reaction is "sorry, you loose". > > > > > > > > Could g-v-m be configured to use the "users" option instead of > > > > > > "user"? > > > > > > According to mount(8), it should allow any user to unmount the > > > > > > device > > > > > > regardless of who mounted it. > > > > > > > yes, but this alone will not do. you also need to make the files > > > > > available, so > > > > > a group and the right gid options would be best in this circunstance. > > > > > > Please first define the behaviour you would like to see, before going > > > > into > > > > implementation details.. Do you want everyone to be able to umount all > > > > removable devices under all circumstances ? Or just in some cases or... > > > > [...] > > > > > Still, i understand that this is a maybe non-solveable usability issue. > > > Let's > > > go into this in detail, as you asked. > > > > > > 1) There is one physical machine, where stuff can be plugged into. > > > > > > 2) This machine usually has only one user holding the console, so this > > > user > > > is used by pmount, and everything works fine. > > > > I guess the "first" running g-v-m that notices the new device gets to > > assign its owner to the mounted device? (Each user may be running > > g-v-m and I'm guessing one of them notices the new device first?) > > > > > 3) In the case at hand, there are two X server running on the same > > > machine > > > and the same console. They are not active at the same time, and it would > > > stand to reason that the expected behaviour would be for the user whose > > > session is actually active to mount the stuff. I don't know if this is > > > easily available as info though, but once you know this, the rest > > > becomes > > > easy. > > > > Yes, if we could determine which of multiple X servers running on the > > current console was the active one when the device is plugged in that > > would be a start toward the solution. Another option is to open the > > device up to everyone in group plugdev through fstab (as below) but > > that is less than ideal: > > > > /dev/usbkey /media/usbkey auto users,gid=plugdev,umask=0002,defaults 0 0 > > > > > Remaining problem is what to do about a plugged in USB stick, once you > > > switch over to the other console. One solution would be a console user > > > group, but again this poses security problems, altough rather limited > > > ones. > > > > Would not the use of the "users" option in mount be a help to the > > solution here? The second user here just unmounts the device > > Well, you also want to access the files, not only umount it, right ? > g-v-m/pmount/whatever also sets the uid of the mount to the first user running > it. So you need to do a gid=plugdev as you did above, but this means that any > user of the plugdev group may access the files.
Thanks. I was thinking the second (i.e., current) user would umount the USB, and then let their own g-v-m catch it as it is plugged in again, and so they then get full access to the USB. A little inconvenient, but could work logically from a user's point of view. >From implementation point of view, would only work if there was some way of "turning off" the first (non-current) user's g-v-m, and "turning on" the second (current) user's g-v-m. Regards, Graham
