ConsoleKit shutdown service, a different viewpoint

[Patryk Zawadzki]

On Feb 1, 2008 2:05 PM, Rob Taylor <rob.taylor at codethink.co.uk> wrote:
> I have a slightly different viewpoint on why it might not be a good idea
> to have a shutdown service in ConsoleKit: what if you want more input to
> the shutdown decision than just what consoles are currently active?
>
> A good usecase to consider here is if an administrator is installing
> packages or doing a distribution upgrade - how would this get fed into
> the decision?
>
> Also:
> Can you have policy so a user with sufficient privileges can shut down a
> box though another user's logged in?
>
> Can you have response to a shutdown request - we have an example usecase
> on the OHM wiki [1] where one console user has left a large download
> going - could a user requesting a shutdown get informed of the situation?
>
> Another example is an edge case of a simultaneous shut-down and suspend
> to disk, one should always take precedence, but if a suspend is in
> progress, the shutdown should probably not happen.
>
> Ideas on how these could work would be very interesting for me!

While usecases are good, the solution is not. It's like putting the
whole policy management inside HAL just to check if a user is able to
mount a removable drive. HAL is a consumer of other services so it can
ask ConsoleKit as well as it asks PolicyKit (and since PolicyKit
already depends on ConsoleKit, it would most likely be a blessed
dependency).

-- 
Patryk Zawadzki
PLD Linux Distribution