[1511] in athena10
Re: the debathena-managed metapackage
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Basch)
Tue Mar 10 22:23:52 2009
In-Reply-To: <B91944A4-5B88-4DE8-8AFD-03E86D36647E@mit.edu>
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Cc: Tim Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>, Evan Broder <broder@mit.edu>,
Greg Price <price@mit.edu>, debathena@mit.edu
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From: Robert Basch <rbasch@MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:22:44 -0400
To: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@mit.edu>
The motive behind making the setting mandatory on -cluster was so
people could always log out a well-intentioned user, who may have
disabled the logout button in personal preferences (for whatever
reason), from a cluster machine. (Also, that use of the "hit the
power button" option is something we would prefer to minimize).
There is no pretense of it being foolproof.
While I see the point about making "public" and "private" machines
the same, this seems like one area where a difference might make
sense. (If we do decide to make them the same, though, I agree
that the settings should be defaults, not mandatory).
Bob
On Mar 10, 2009, at 12:33 PM, Jonathan Reed wrote:
>>>> I don't think forcing the gconf key on -cluster users is useful;
>>>> they can
>>>> always run a build of xscreensaver out of their home directory
>>>> instead if
>>>> they want to avoid the logout button.
>>>
>>>
>>> I assume you meant -workstation, not -cluster, right? (Since we
>>> currently
>>> _do_ force cluster users to have a logout button)
>>
>> I was suggesting we could get away with changing -cluster to just
>> set the
>> default, rather than force the issue, because it doesn't really
>> change the
>> user's ability to not have a logout button if he really wants to. We
>> could also just force the issue on -workstation. I don't think
>> it's going
>> to cause serious problems either way, but I think it's best that what
>> happens when you login on a "private" workstation be the same as
>> when you
>> login on a "public" workstation.
>
> OK, I see now. Let's go ahead with setting it to the default (but
> not mandatory) for -cluster and -workstation, unless someone wants
> to make the case for it being mandatory in both places, but it
> sounds like there's objection to that. There's always the "hit the
> power button" option for people who are excessively abusing cluster
> workstations and don't have logout buttons.
>
> And yes, there's a lot of value in having "private" workstations be
> as close to "public" ones as possible.
>
> -Jon
