Joe Bouchard wrote: > > On Tue, Dec 14, 1999 at 10:01:22AM +0100, Svante Signell wrote: > > - I want to enable my family to use Linux instead of the other > > OS. Therefore it is important that they can start the computer, run > > it and shut down in a CONTROLLED way. Restart/shutdown are menu > > entries in the other OS!! > > I've thought about this a lot too. > > Can you teach your kids to type "sudo reboot"? (I don't mean that > sarcastically, I have kids too . . .) You may even be able to put it in > a menu item. > > I think visudo and has options to give people just certain priviliges.
I use GDM (instead of XDM) and it has a "System" menu which allows a shutdown and reboot (although this has to be enabled in gdm.conf, and there isn't much by way of documentation... iirc you have to change a line which says something like "systemmenu=0" to "systemmenu=1", but don't quote me on that). Therefore all I need to do to reboot as any user, even if they don't have root privileges, is log out and then select it from the menu. As a bonus, GDM supports all your GNOME themes, selectable icons for each user (imagine having your kids login by doubleclicking on photos of their faces and then typing their passwords) and lots of other cool stuff. I haven't had any problems with it (I'm using potato, so YMMV if you're using slink... but I think that there may be an "October GNOME" slink update which would bring you up to the same version. HTH, Stuart.
