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Old 02-18-2010, 02:14 AM   #1
emamarro
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multiple users sharing same /home ?


Hi! have a question may be sounds strange but really need this!
Need to let different users share same data and contents on a pc.
I don't mean permissions to write,read,execute on other's /home
They have to share same space,settings,mail,etc.etc
Is there a way to get this?
thank a lot for help
Ciao
Emanuele
 
Old 02-18-2010, 02:22 AM   #2
Davno
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Quote:
Originally Posted by emamarro View Post
Hi! have a question may be sounds strange but really need this!
Need to let different users share same data and contents on a pc.
I don't mean permissions to write,read,execute on other's /home
They have to share same space,settings,mail,etc.etc
Is there a way to get this?
thank a lot for help
Ciao
Emanuele
Easy, just create one user called Guest with a password like Guest or something like that and tell everybody about it.
But you might want instead to create many users, and have a /data partition automatically mounted with open permission for all those users and instead of having them save the data to there /home/user tell them to write to that /data partition.

Last edited by Davno; 02-18-2010 at 02:25 AM.
 
Old 02-18-2010, 02:24 AM   #3
evo2
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Sounds nasty.

Why not go the whole way: just make one account and let them all use it?

Any chance you could describe the actual problem that you are trying to address? They is sure to be a better approach.

Evo2.
 
Old 02-18-2010, 02:29 AM   #4
druuna
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Hi,

I totally agree with evo2.

Keep your actual users separated from each other and create a dedicated user for the specific environment(s).

Ie: if some/all users need to do work on say the database environment create a database user and let the normal users enter that account. You can give them the full login credentials or add them to sudo.

Hope this helps.
 
Old 02-18-2010, 02:52 AM   #5
emamarro
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We have in Italy this strange law regarding tracking and privacy..
Any operator working on the same pc needs own credentials to log in
At the same time I want everybody using and working on the same thunderbird account and same desktop

I know that for windows systems, have created a script using screensaver function to login and logout without changing enviroment

I was wondering if something similar would be available under linux such like switching user keeping same desktop and enviroment
Thanks
 
Old 02-18-2010, 03:02 AM   #6
i92guboj
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If your only requirement is to have different credentials, you can create a thousand users with the same home directory.

But expect some fuzz... some programs might record these credentials and get confused when run with a different $USER name.
 
Old 02-18-2010, 03:10 AM   #7
evo2
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How about everyone having their own account, but their .xsession file just does an su to the shared user before firing up the window manager/desktop environment. Might take some lower level tweaking, but it should possible.

Evo2.
 
Old 02-18-2010, 03:10 AM   #8
druuna
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Hi,

Before you start creating users with the same homedir do have a good look at the Italian law concerning tracking and privacy.

I doubt it (i'm not italian and don't know that specific law) if having their own credentials (as in own name and password only) is enough to comply. This would _not_ record action of a specific individual user, which might be needed.

Just a heads up.
 
Old 02-18-2010, 03:28 AM   #9
evo2
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I just had a look at the config file for my display manager (I use slim) and there is a setting for the login command. It is set to:

Code:
login_cmd           exec /bin/bash -login /etc/X11/Xsession %session
I wonder if you could change it to something like:

Code:
login_cmd           exec /bin/bash -login (sudo /usr/local/bin/generic_user /etc/X11/Xsession %session)
Where you have setup sudo to allow the specific users to run /usr/local/bin/su_generic without entering a password.
/usr/local/bin/su_generic would be a script containing something like.
Code:
su -c $1 generic
Where "generic" is the user that everyone will be using. I think this should probably satisfy the legal requirements since the su call is logged: so you can see which individual user is logged in as the generic user. The reason for using the script instead of a direct "sudo su" is simply because you don't want to give passwordless access to the "su" command for your users.

Evo2.
 
  


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