Session Management Proposal

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

hi,

a counterpart to "fast" ("slow" - hehe) shutdown could be useful - if
fast means no confirmation dialog, slow would mean always confirm, even
if it was configured away - that could be useful for shutdown requests
"out of the blue" (for whatever reason somebody might want to do that).

On Sun, Dec 28, 2003 at 05:54:53PM -1000, Ray Strode wrote:
> +    <formalpara>
> +      <title>Session Shutdown</title>
> ...
> +      <para>
> +        <itemizedlist>
> +            <listitem>
> +                <para>
> +                    _NET_ShutdownModeLogOut (0).  The session
> +                    manager should log out of the active session.
> +                </para>
> +            </listitem>
> +            <listitem>
> +                <para>
> +                    _NET_ShutdownModeReboot (1).  The session
> +                    manager should reboot the computer.
> +                </para>
> +            </listitem>
> +            <listitem>
> +                <para>
> +                    _NET_ShutdownModeHalt (2).  The session
> +                    manager should halt the computer.
> +                </para>
> +            </listitem>
> +        </itemizedlist>
> ...

> If the initiating client did
> +      not set the "_NET_ShutdownMode" property, then the session
> +      manager should assume an implied shutdown mode of
> +      "_NET_ShutdownModeLogOut".
>
... for compatibility.
but then we need a mode "Default".

another thing i'm wondering about is "Suspend" mode. considerations:
- like reboot/halt it might need authorization - after all it makes the
  box unresponsive to network activity (apart from WOL, etc.)
- but it doesn't need to end the session
- still, it could be useful to tell all interested applications that
  they should enter some passive state. i'm not sure this should be done
  over xsmp, though - maybe some generic d-bus based system would be
  more useful

the next point is communicating the system shutdown request to the
desktop manager, as that's the place it belongs to. currently kdm has a
one-way command fifo and gdm has some fancy command socket. i'd like to
replace that with something common, possibly based on d-bus - dunno.

yet another option to system shutdown ... kdm supports three "shutdown
timings": "force now" (the usual thing), "try now" (shut down only if no
user session is open) and "schedule" (shut down when last user session
exits). "schedule" could be generalized to take a timeout - "try now"
would be the special case 0 then. "force now" could be coalesced into
the generic "schedule" mode by adding a timeout action: "cancel" and
"force shutdown".
as these scheduling modes are way too complicated for normal users
(believe me, i tried it :), the usual course of action should be to pop
up a warning box "sessions are still open. what now? [cancel] [schedule]
[kill 'em all!]" on demand. i.e., the shutdown request needs a
"fast/slow" "sub-option" for "fine-grained options" (the defaults would
be to hide this feature entirely unless explicitly enabled it in the
control center).

when interactive shutdown is choosen (i.e., the default), the shutdown
mode and timing parameters are used as presets for the dialog, not as
the only option. well, that's self-evident, i guess.

greetings

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