Guest session / guest account

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2011-04-27 18:38, Jeremy Bicha wrote:
> On 27 April 2011 03:24, Gunnar Hjalmarsson <ubuntu at gunnar.cc> wrote:
>> I see no reason to not show the page about creating a guest 
>> account. Previously that page was interlinked with the guest 
>> session page, which IMO was a nice way to explain both approaches 
>> and let the users choose.
> 
> Gunnar, thanks for asking. The stubbed Guest page was misleading and
> encourages computer owners to use a less secure means of allowing a
> guest to use their computer.
> 
> "You can create a user account for guests ... The guest user ... 
> won't be able to access your files ..."

You are right about that part being incorrect with respect to Ubuntu's
default file permissions in /home.

> In fact, the page I stubbed is really not functionally different than
> the "Add a new user account" page.

Agreed; the "guest account" is just a user account for a special purpose.

Nevertheless, I think we should assume that computer owners are able to
decide for themselves the degree of (in)security they need for the
persons they might lend their computers to. Therefore it seems right to
me to inform about both the approaches, including their pros and cons.

OTOH, you have made me realize that including both the options in the
docs in a sensible way requires more considerations and work than I
first thought. Consequently I rest my case for now. After all, as I
mentioned, it's gdm-guest-session that is my pet package. :)  May still
come back at a later time with a proposal.

> I think it's possible to rewrite this as an advanced page, making 
> these guests members of another group that could not read other 
> user's home directories.

As long as the home directories are world readable, I can't see how the
group might make a difference. (And changing that by default would
probably be quite a large system design change.)

/ Gunnar

P.S. Congrats on your core-doc membership. AFAICT you are well worth it.