[maemo-users] multi-user?

[From: Erik Hovland]

sebastian maemo <sebastian.maemo <at> gmail.com> writes:
> I'm also really interested in the answer to your question...

Then try making a user! I did. Follow up below.

> I can only give you a hint I read some time ago: when
> trying to add new users there were problems because
> almost the whole system depends on 'user' path, so
> that a different name for user would not work...

The user account user is the one and only user beside
root on the system. But most of the scripts used to startup
do not hardwire that fact. Note I said most.

I logged in as root after installing openssh (I usually
install dropbear - but I think I want ssh-agent going
so I installed openssh this time around). Then I typed:
useradd -c "Erik Hovland" -g users \
        -G video,audio,dialout -m erik

Fortunately, that worked. Then I typed 'su - erik'.
Whoops:
mkdir: cannot create directory '/home/user/.osso': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat '/home/user/.osso/current-gtk-theme': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat '/home/user/.osso/current-gtk-key-theme': Permission denied

A 'find /etc -name \* | xargs grep mkdir' popped up the file
/etc/osso-af-init/osso-gtk.sh. That leads to a little change
for which I filed a bug for here:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2837

Now when I type 'su - erik' I am logged right in.

Of course that is just the tip of the iceberg. I have
not yet attempted to get the thing to launch the full
environment in my user name. Even after that, there is no
ready made way to switch users in the framework. So some
additional hacking will be required.

Anyhow, thought I would share my experience in case it inspires
users to attempt some new things with it.

E

--
Erik Hovland
mail: erik at hovland.org
web: http://hovland.org/
PGP/GPG public key available on request