Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
Dave Airlie wrote: The mechanism setting the permissions of your audio device is almost certainly pam_console. If it bothers you, you can turn it off and fall-back to the old way of doing things by putting /dev/dsp in the audio group etc. take a look at /etc/security/console.perms.. Dave. Dave Thanks for the tip. It works like a charm so now myself and the other half have our own (concurrent) desktops, both with sound! Yay! Again, thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion thread, especially Jeff and James. I've only been on this list for less than a week and already I have seen how damn useful it is. Shaun -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
quote who=Peter Rundle I also never managed to solve the sound lock out problem. My system is running esd, and in theory esd sould manage/mix multiple audio out requests, but when the first user logs in and esd gets started, the esd process is owned by that user. Something also sets the permissions on the audio device to be u+rw only for that user, i.e no group prviledges. If as root you overrode the audio device to be g+rw, then the second user could play sound, but as soon as the first user logged out, esd died and the permissions of the audio device went back to root ownership. A better solution would obviously be for esd to be a system process started in /etc/init.d with a config somewhere that allowed the admin to define which users had access. Is this on a Red Hat like system? There are two problems involved here, and I think it's subtly different to the problem explained above. The first is that if your hardware doesn't support multiple writers, the second esd won't be able to open the device anyway. However, I don't think that's the problem you're seeing; I have a suspicion it might be related to consolehelper stuff in Red Hat like systems, which set special permissions for users who have logged in locally (at the console). I can't say for sure, but your problem is either a) you can't have a second writer with your hardware or audio driver, whether it's esd or not or b) consolehelper gives the first user exclusive access, blocking out the second. I never found out which bit of code was setting the privledges but it smacks of we know better something we all critise Microsoft of Whoa there... Now you're attributing systemic silliness to malice... And comparing it to Microsoft! Yowza. Let's stand back for a minute. The issue here is *caused by* either a) crappy modern audio hardware or b) sensible security policy defined by your distribution (which can be administered by you!). and an attitude that is detectable in Jeff's postings on this subject. I think jeff should take a few humility pills, and perhaps maybe accept that even if he does know better, as end users, that's not what we want. Dude, I don't make crappy modern audio hardware that doesn't do hardware mixing, nor do I define security policies for your distribution. Nowt to do with me, sorry to say (though it's nice to have a scapegoat). I've actually given up using Gnome because I just don't like the direction the development is going. This is of course a personal thing and others may love it but for me Gnome has just become annoying. Luckily, this issue is unrelated to GNOME, but regardless, I would love to hear more from you about what has turned you off about it. Whilst some of his arguments about dynamically running processes etc are somewhat valid, but we also know that when processes aren't in active use, the magic linux kernel tends to swap them out and recover the memory, which is so cheap and plentiful these days anyway that the whole argument is just so last centuary Providing a user interface that normal human beings can use is so last century? I think you may have misread my point... Also his just argued that we should get rid of the ctrl-alt-f1 etc to drop to a shell and include it into Gnome, because it's just another user session, and those mingettys man they must be chewing up CPU and memory! ;-) Ah, no, I did not say that at all. We were talking about different methods of providing multiple local X logins via GDM, which *does* provide a nicely dynamic way of doing it instead of having to configure it first (much like Windows XP and OS X). - Jeff -- GUADEC 2005: Stuttgart, Germany http://2005.guadec.org/ You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. - Kenny Rogers, The Gambler -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 09:24 +1100, Peter Rundle wrote: I also never managed to solve the sound lock out problem. My system is running esd, and in theory esd sould manage/mix multiple audio out requests, And it does. But it won't open up access to your sound card for all users unless you ask it to. If you tell esd to be 'public' and listen on a tcp socket, this problem will go away. By default, however it listens on a unix domain socket, which essentially gets file-like permissions that are probably blocking out your other session. The other way to do this is to tell esd to close the connection to the audio device when it's not using it. Then, when you switch users the device will be unlocked and it will work like you'd expect (similarly, the first esd will be able to re-open the device after control has been relinquished by the second one). The mechanism setting the permissions of your audio device is almost certainly pam_console. If it bothers you, you can turn it off and fall-back to the old way of doing things by putting /dev/dsp in the audio group etc. And please, if you've got issues with GNOME (or anything else), take them to a sensible forum. Like their bugzilla. James. -- There is no I in TEAM but there is an i in Ninja -- http://www.ninjaburger.com/sekrit/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
quote who=James Gregory On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 09:24 +1100, Peter Rundle wrote: I also never managed to solve the sound lock out problem. My system is running esd, and in theory esd sould manage/mix multiple audio out requests, And it does. But it won't open up access to your sound card for all users unless you ask it to. If you tell esd to be 'public' and listen on a tcp socket, this problem will go away. (More details for everyone's benefit...) Although, to make it entirely clear, esd normally runs as a particular user, so unless you've explicitly configured it to run as a system daemon with the right *permanent* privileges, it will still suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortunes like consolehelper switching permissions around. This is most often done on thin client systems, listening on a public interface (so the central server can connect to them and play sounds without any kind of interruption). So it would make sense to configure esd (or better, polypaudio) to run as a mostly unprivileged system daemon, listening on localhost, with all the client apps configured to talk to it. The only thing you're stuck with here is *any* process being able to connect to esd and play sounds! Which, btw, is precisely what consolehelper is designed to avoid... :-) - Jeff -- GUADEC 2005: Stuttgart, Germany http://2005.guadec.org/ It's like having someone say to you, 'You should get back together with your first wife. You guys were good together'. It's not that simple. - David Byrne on Talking Heads -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
The mechanism setting the permissions of your audio device is almost certainly pam_console. If it bothers you, you can turn it off and fall-back to the old way of doing things by putting /dev/dsp in the audio group etc. take a look at /etc/security/console.perms.. Dave. -- David Airlie, Software Engineer http://www.skynet.ie/~airlied / airlied at skynet.ie pam_smb / Linux DECstation / Linux VAX / ILUG person -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
Hi James and Jeff - Thankyou very much for your responses. I've tried both suggestions and they both work fine. Pressing crtlaltF8 is a hell of a lot easier than having to log out of one account and logging into the other! I've had this arrangement on my desktop for years so that the better half and myself can share the machine as Shuan described. One thing that I wanted to do was have the GDM login screen display which virtual screen it was running on, but never managed to get this to work. I was able to do it for the shell running on f1-f2, but I couldn't get which tty gdm was running on into the welcome message. GDM (and I'm not using at the mo, so this is a RFM) does that in the welcome message as Welcome to this.box:1 I had thin clients on my server and had myclient on myserver $DISPLAY is your friend. I also never managed to solve the sound lock out problem. My system is running esd, and in theory esd sould manage/mix multiple audio out requests, but when the first user logs in and esd gets started, the esd process is owned by that user. Something also sets the permissions on the audio device to be u+rw only for that user, i.e no group prviledges. If as root you overrode the audio device to be g+rw, then the second user could play sound, but as soon as the first user logged out, esd died and the permissions of the audio device went back to root ownership. A better solution would obviously be for esd to be a system process started in /etc/init.d with a config somewhere that allowed the admin to define which users had access. I never found out which bit of code was setting the privledges but it smacks of we know better something we all critise Microsoft of and an attitude that is The culprit is PAM. RedHat and SuSE do have (others must have) device-permission files in /etc. Find them and edit. (I have only SuSE boxen in front of me), there it is /etc/logindevperm usually stuff like :0 0600 /dev/amidi:/dev/amidi0:/dev/amidi1:/dev/amidi2:/dev/amidi3 :0 0600 /dev/audio:/dev/audio0:/dev/audio1:/dev/audio2:/dev/audio3:/dev/audioctl becomes :0 0666 /dev/amidi:/dev/amidi0:/dev/amidi1:/dev/amidi2:/dev/amidi3 :0 0666 /dev/audio:/dev/audio0:/dev/audio1:/dev/audio2:/dev/audio3:/dev/audioctl And any conflicts are not an issue, eg me and her both play a CD! Also SuSE is cunning: permissions / console eg :0 :1 etc. detectable in Jeff's postings on this subject. I think jeff should take a few humility pills, and perhaps maybe accept that even if he does know better, as end users, that's not what we want. I've actually given up using Gnome because I just don't like the direction the development is going. This is of course a personal thing and others may love it but for me Gnome has just become annoying. I can't get it to do what I want and I constantly have to battle to get it to stop doing things that I don't want it to do. Nautilus taking over my desktop is another example. I mostly use icewm, but for a few things I need a desktop and kde has the functionality (auto-mount your camera, display winders shares etc) and its perfect for my 80 yo grandmother who has no hope of being taught to keep Norton up to date, and not to open attachments ... she loves it. James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
I can't say for sure, but your problem is either a) you can't have a second writer with your hardware or audio driver, whether it's esd or not or b) consolehelper gives the first user exclusive access, blocking out the second. Now why on earth would I run two versions of esd when one is more than capable of accepting multiple concurrent connections? Why was esd written in the first place? so that crappy modern audio hardware could be shared amoung processes. So the logical and simple solution would be to start a single esd, not at the time the first user logs in, but as a permanetly running system deamon, and have all audio processes talk to esd. I.e esd provides the sound sevice missing from the original X-server architecture. If I recall that was Rasters original idea but somehow it got lost along the way. Mostly no doubt because certainly applications didn't support esd or decided that they prefered to invent their own alternate approach. Reading through the other postings it appears that with a bit of bashing I might be able to get my system to function in this manner. Providing a user interface that normal human beings can use is so last century? I think you may have misread my point... In this specific case, Your point was that the ctrl-alt-f7/f8 solution meant two X servers permanently running which you implied was a bad thing. My point was, that the other alternate (text based) logins where done using ctrl-alt-f1/f2...f6, so if your argument is valid that ctrl-alt-f7/f8 is the wrong way to go about it then you must also be arguing that the mingettys running to support all those mostly unused tty logins was also the wrong solution. However with todays massive amounts of memory and the kernels ability to swap out un-used processes, who cares? Not me actually. P. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
Greetings SLUG List My home PC runs Fedora Core 1 with the Gnome Desktop. My wife and I have separate user accounts so we can both log in and use our own mail clients, have our own desktop settings etc. The one thing that I am sick of is having to log out of each others' accounts and then log into our own to read email etc. Windows XP has functionality which enables you to switch between users quickly. Is there a way in linux to be able to switch users quickly without logging off one user and then logging onto the other? Shaun -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
quote who=Shaun Butler My home PC runs Fedora Core 1 with the Gnome Desktop. My wife and I have separate user accounts so we can both log in and use our own mail clients, have our own desktop settings etc. The one thing that I am sick of is having to log out of each others' accounts and then log into our own to read email etc. Windows XP has functionality which enables you to switch between users quickly. Is there a way in linux to be able to switch users quickly without logging off one user and then logging onto the other? Totally - GNOME has had this feature for ages! :-) You can even run another session in a little window in your existing session. The two menu items that will help you out (yes, they should be in more sensible locations): Applications System Tools New Login Applications System Tools New Login in a Nested Window The second will only appear if you have xnest installed, and will launch a new login screen in a window, rather than as a full screen display. Switching between the logins is a little bit harder than Windows XP, because we haven't nicely integrated it into the UI as much, but you only need to hit Ctrl-Alt-F7 (the normal first display) and Ctrl-Alt-F8 (for the second display). Hopefully this functionality will be exposed in a much nicer way during the next GNOME development cycle. :-) - Jeff -- GUADEC 2005: Stuttgart, Germany http://2005.guadec.org/ Applications are just kernel testcases. - Andrew Morton -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
quote who=Jeff Waugh Applications System Tools New Login Applications System Tools New Login in a Nested Window Hopefully this functionality will be exposed in a much nicer way during the next GNOME development cycle. :-) It probably won't work this way in GNOME proper, but if your distro ships the user switching applet, or you're happy building it, you'll probably enjoy this: http://esco.mine.nu/category/code/fast-user-switching-applet/ - Jeff -- GUADEC 2005: Stuttgart, Germany http://2005.guadec.org/ Mr Hunt also admits he does not like the expression 'diddly squat', though he will not be ruling it to be unparliamentary. - ABC News Online -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Two concurrent Gnome Desktops?
thats a neat feature i wasnt aware of ... anything similar for kde? regards, brett On Friday 04 February 2005 13:28, Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=Jeff Waugh Applications System Tools New Login Applications System Tools New Login in a Nested Window Hopefully this functionality will be exposed in a much nicer way during the next GNOME development cycle. :-) It probably won't work this way in GNOME proper, but if your distro ships the user switching applet, or you're happy building it, you'll probably enjoy this: http://esco.mine.nu/category/code/fast-user-switching-applet/ - Jeff -- GUADEC 2005: Stuttgart, Germany http://2005.guadec.org/ Mr Hunt also admits he does not like the expression 'diddly squat', though he will not be ruling it to be unparliamentary. - ABC News Online -- Brett Fenton NetRegistry Pty Ltd ___ http://www.netregistry.com.au/ Tel: +61 2 96996099 | Fax: +61 2 96996088 PO Box 270 Broadway | NSW 2007, Australia Your Total Internet Business Services Provider Trusted by 10,000s of Oz Businesses Since 1997 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
