Tracking users/sessions on the console

[John (J5) Palmieri]

On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 12:05 -0800, Artem Kachitchkine wrote:
> David,
> 
> > To get to the next level of the Linux desktop experience, I'm of the
> > opinion we need framework for tracking what is happening on the various
> > consoles attached to the system.
> 
> Could you summarize the motivation for such a framework.
> 
> I read the blog, but the picture is still a bit hazy. I understand the 
> desire to apply policies (power mgmt, screen saver and such) outside 
> user sessions, but it seems to change the policy scope from 'desktop' to 
> 'system'. At the system scope we cannot assume desktop, e.g. we cannot 
> assume policies are stored in GNOME specific store.

Store is dictated by the application utilizing the policy such as
gnome-power-manager or NetworkManager, etc.

>  As an example, 
> assume a case of three console users: one running GNOME, another running 
> KDE and yet another running CDE. It seems to me that under the system 
> scope things are done a bit differently, and that desktop policy engines 
> should be system-aware, not the other way around.

Depends on what the distro/user decides to use to enforce policy.
Really we can forge ahead or let this fear of stepping on toes bind us.
Besides, though I don't want to say it is the way to go yet, a lot of
these things are being looked into, as far as consolidation of
technologies go, in the Portland project. 

-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp at redhat.com>