Xubuntu desktop manager not LTSP aware

[Steven McCoy]

Selecting power-off in the desktop manager shuts down the LTSP server instead of the LTSP client.

[Gauvain Pocentek (gpocentek)]

Thanks for the report. Does this happen on Dapper or Edgy?
And did you set up the kiosk mode as explained at http://www.xfce.org/documentation/docs-4.2/xfce4-panel.html#panel-kiosk ?

[Steven McCoy (dsbunny)]

Dapper with out-of-the-box configuration, no kiosk mode. I will try Edgy later.

The Ubuntu desktop automagically removes the hibernate and shutdown options when accessed through LTSP.

[Gauvain Pocentek (gpocentek)]

Xfce doesn't automagically sets up this (yet?).
The kiosk mode is broken on dapper (bug #54034).
Please test on edgy :)

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

does this happen on edgy or feisty?

[Jérôme Guelfucci (jerome-guelfucci-deactivatedaccount)]

Any news on this ? Does it still happen with Feisty ?

[Roland Ronquist (roland-ronquist)]

neither edgy, feisty, nor gutsy recognices that you are running a remote session.
I can only imagine the horrors of a teacher running xubuntu at school.

with responsible and educated users this is a non issue, but well, the name
edubuntu tells something about some education that needs to be done 8-)

Best,
r.r.

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

Hi Roland,

is kiosk mode set up as mentioned in the comments above?

[Roland Ronquist (roland-ronquist)]

Hi Jani,

no I am not running kiosk mode, I am running a small office.
But since I found this bug report while looking for something
else I figured that somebody might be interested in some information 8-)

Anyway, when running either gnome or kde, without any
special config, they both figure out that they are running
out of a thin client and refuses to provide options that could
close down the server for the whole network. With xubuntu
it is a different game, any user can shut down the server.
Since we do not have anybody evil (or stupid) enough to
shut down our server in a bad way around my place that
is not a problem for me, but still it irritates me a little bit
every time I log out, to have this abundance of options to
chose from when I only want to log out.

A slightly unrelated idea for a new feature is having shutdown
and reboot buttons that works on the client after you log out.
Now you will have to wait for the log out to be accomplished
before you can switch of your terminal.

So I did not write my previous message because of
personal problems but rather because that Jérôme
asked for some more input.

BTW, since xfce seems to be quite easy to configure,
I doubt it would be a great trouble for a manager of
a kiosk setup to disable the "evil" logout options.
Though I have not tried setting up this particular thing
so I may be wrong, at least there are settings in
the control panel ("sessions and startup") for this
purpose and there should be config files for the
same features as well.

Best,
r.r.

[Roland Ronquist (roland-ronquist)]

some aditional info:

as I am playing about with Gutsy, it seems like XFCE has started
to be a little bit more LTSP aware:

1. I still get all those confusing options, but now it begs me
for authentication (password) before it starts shutting down things.

2. I do not know if it wants password if I am sitting at the console.

3. I am still not convinced that all users really want or need this
wide range of choices for a plain log-out request. Especially
not considered the fact that Xubuntu is meant for non geeks.

[Jeremy W (wrightjmf)]

Hello Everyone,

If anybody is interested, we have posted a work around for this bug on our blog.

http://tillamookrage.blogspot.com/2007/09/ltsp-client-shuts-down-server-fix.html

Its not fix by any means, but it is the method that we are using to make LTSP systems more usable for people and administrators. It seems to work very well. I'm sure this bug will be fixed soon, but hopefully that helps in the mean time.

Thanks,

Jeremy

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xfce4-panel (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Klaus Thorn (klaus-trillke)]

I ran into this bug on ubuntu server 7.10 after installing ltsp and xubuntu-desktop. No kiosk mode. All network users are allowed to login, so the one-user-workaround earlier posted does not work. I set the Status of this bug to "Confirmed". I hope this was correct. There was no "reopen" or "rediscovered" status choice. "Invalid" was the status before, seems to be definetly wrong if we consider that the bug is still alive and kicking.

Maybe even more important than changing the status: A workaround that does work:

in /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf convert some lines with:
 allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement"
into html-style comments. (not all are neccessary I guess):
 policy at_console="true", policy group="powerdev", policy context="default"

Environment here: xfce4-panel 4.4.1-1ubuntu3, Intel Celeron CPU 2.40GHz

[jpka (jopka)]

I also have this bug. It is strange it is not 'critical' importance. User *without any rights* easily shuts down server with a lot of other users connected...

Xfce 4 Desktop Environment version 4.6.1 (Xfce 4.6)
xfce4-panel 4.6.1 (Xfce 4.6.1)

http://www.xfce.org/documentation/docs-4.2/xfce4-panel.html#panel-kiosk - page not found.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

jpka: Thanks for reporting this issue in Xfce 4.6.1. The original bug report was filed against Xfce 4.2, which is no longer in use. The correct page for documentation about the kiosk mode on the Xfce wiki is:
http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/kiosk_mode

The documentation for the panel in kiosk mode is:
http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfce4-panel#panel-kiosk

The documentation for the sessions in kiosk mode is:
http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfce4-session#xfsm-kiosk-mode

Unfortunately, most of the documentation has not been updated yet for Xfce 4.6. The "4.2" in the above references indicates the documents are for Xfce 4.2. There are many changes in Xfce 4.6, and you will need to adjust things as needed.

I need some more information about this bug, if you could. At a minimum, we need:
1) The release of Ubuntu you are using, via 'lsb_release -rd' or System -> About Ubuntu.
2. the specific steps or actions you took that caused you to encounter the problem,
3. the behavior you actually encountered (in as much detail as possible).
Thanks!

[jpka (jopka)]

Hi !

1) I use Ubuntu 9.10 (server)
2) I prepare my LTSP setup in following steps:
Install ubuntu-server-i386 on clean partition of 'server' PC
install & configure LTSP package
run 'sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop'
run Xfce under root user, get updates
run 'adduser' to create 'user's without any rights
boot 'thin client's from 'server' and login on clients via Xfce under 'user's
3) Play with this setup, and see all is fine except one thing:
 When i select 'Quit -> Shutdown' on client panel, i immediately get a lot of 'SQUASHFS errors' on client and power off of server. I think it's a critical bug,.. but i currently not sure it's Xfce bug or not.
Then I try workaround as in Comment #12, it's work - i no more able to ruin 'server', but now no simple (and cute) way to poweroff client PC... only way is logout first, then shut down client via login window menu.

Thank you!

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here.

This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments at: http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6274

Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

From the Xfce developers:

Xfce4 Session 4.8 already checks for all the hal/policykit/consolekit/foo stuff
so you should configure that if you don't want your users to be able to
shutdown from Xfce. Closing this, feel free to reopen if I did not understand
correctly.

[Lionel Le Folgoc (mrpouit)]

Following upstream status.