that darned ROOT problem

[Mario Vukelic]

On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 13:54 -0400, Bo Grimes wrote:

> I think people on broadband, some of whom have never known anything 
> else, forget what a pain it is to do things like log off the internet, 
> log out of an account, then someone else logs in, dials back up, 
> etc...all just to browse the web, chat or email.  People won't do it, so 
> you effectively have a single user system anyway.

Just to help out a bit:
I don't think there is any need to do this. I don't know how ubuntu does
it by default on a dialup, but it is quite trivial to configure the
system such that the ppp link is brought up automatically when an
application wants to use it, and brought down after a preconfigured
time. I'm shaky on the details (it's been a long time ...) but you would
have to start pppd on boot, and add some options
in /etc/ppp/peers/providers. Look into man pppd, and search for
"demand".

> 
> There's no way that my 15 year old is going to want his 12 year old 
> sister to log off everything when she's done chatting just so he can log 
> in on his own account and browse the web or check his email. 

Plus, if you go to Applications -> System Tools there is an entry "New
Login". This gives you another login screen on vt8. You can swith
between the 2 X sessions by using Alt+Ctrl+F7 and Alt+Ctrl+F8. 
To enable several login screens permanently, edit /etc/gdm/gdm.conf.
Search for the section "[server]". There you find:

"# These are the standard servers.  You can add as many you want here
# and they will always be started.  Each line must start with a unique
# number and that will be the display number of that server.  Usually
just
# the 0 server is used.
0=Standard
#1=Standard"

If you add more servers here, you will have a login screen at Alt+Ctrl
+F7, one at F8, F9, etc. I dunno what you would have to to for vt's >
10. Anyone?

Regards, Mario