ubuntu-multiseat team mailing list archive

[Laércio Benedito Sivali de Sousa <lbsousajr@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Here's an alternative idea:  Leave [Seat:Foo] alone, but add support for
> [seatFoo] sections (lower-case "seat").  Users might be confused by the
> two similar-but-not-identical methods to declare a seat, but then again,
> [Seat:1] when the seat is actually named seat1 is also a bit confusing.
> Perhaps [Seat:Foo] can be supported but deprecated.  Multiple sessions
> for a single seat could be configured like this:
>
>    [seat0]
>    # this session will be started on VT 7
>    # use Ctrl-Alt-F7 to switch to this session
>
>    [seat0:bob]
>    autologin-user=bob
>    # this session will be started on VT 8
>    # use Ctrl-Alt-F8 to switch to this session
>
> (a colon is not a legal character in a seat name, so it can be used to
> add a disambiguator)

Hey, I like this :-)

I'm starting to draft a [seatFoo] section header support in LightDM. I've
not tested it yet, but you can see my progress in
lp:~lbssousa/lightdm/new-seat-section-header<http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~lbssousa/lightdm/new-seat-section-header>
.
I'll submit it for merging when ready.

Keep the good work!

CANTATE DOMINO CANTICUM NOVUM
QUIA MIRABILIA FECIT

Laércio


2013/8/24 Richard Hansen <ubuntu-a7x@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> On 2013-08-24 16:30, Laércio Benedito Sivali de Sousa wrote:
> > Em 24/08/2013 15:52, "Richard Hansen" <ubuntu-a7x@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> escreveu:
> >> AFAIK, there's nothing limiting the set of valid seat names, so 'auto'
> >> is a valid seat name.  It's a bad idea to use 'auto' as a seat name due
> >> to the potential for udev tag conflicts, though, so hijacking it to have
> >> a special meaning in lightdm.conf is probably OK.
> >
> > According to logind documentation, a valid seat id must start with the
> > string "seat", so "auto" should not be a valid one, but e.g. "seatauto"
> > does.
>
> Oh, you're right!  I missed that.  From
> <http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat/>:
>
>     Seats are identified by seat names, which are short strings
>     (<= 64chars), that start with the four characters "seat" followed
>     by at least one more character from the range a-zA-Z0-9, "_" and
>     "-".  They are suitable for inclusion in file names.
>
> >>> or something similar, then derive seat id from section
> >>> header.
> >>
> >> Interesting idea, but I'm hesitant to implement it myself because I
> >> suspect automatic multiseat support will largely make this an unused
> >> feature.  When automatic multiseat support is implemented, rather than
> >> this:
> >>
> >>     [SeatDefaults]
> >>     greeter-session=unity-greeter
> >>     xdg-seat=auto
> >>
> >>     [Seat:0]
> >>
> >>     [Seat:1]
> >>
> >> people will simply do something like this:
> >>
> >>     [SeatDefaults]
> >>     greeter-session=unity-greeter
> >>
> >>     [AutoSeats]
> >>
> >> and seat0 and seat1 will be used automatically as they are reported by
> >> logind.
> >
> > I don't know if I understand what you mean,
>
> With automatic multiseat, the display manager doesn't need to have a
> config entry for each seat.  Instead, it simply asks logind what seats
> are available.  It then launches a display server for each seat as
> appropriate.
>
> It also listens to logind to see if any new seats appear or existing
> seats go away.
>
> So instead of explicitly declaring [Seat:0] and [Seat:1] in
> lightdm.conf, I imagine users will simply have an [AutoSeats] section
> that contains settings that apply to all auto-discovered seats.
>
> > but even when automatic
> > multiseat support arrives in LightDM, some per seat settings will still
> > be useful, like customizing display server command line, setting
> > autologin user, etc. For example, I still want to set
> >
> > [Seat:1]
> > autologin-user=alice
> >
> > so that user alice is logged in when seat1 is detected by LightDM.
>
> Good point.  So yeah, maybe an xdg-seat=auto option would be good to have.
>
> Here's an alternative idea:  Leave [Seat:Foo] alone, but add support for
> [seatFoo] sections (lower-case "seat").  Users might be confused by the
> two similar-but-not-identical methods to declare a seat, but then again,
> [Seat:1] when the seat is actually named seat1 is also a bit confusing.
>  Perhaps [Seat:Foo] can be supported but deprecated.  Multiple sessions
> for a single seat could be configured like this:
>
>     [seat0]
>     # this session will be started on VT 7
>     # use Ctrl-Alt-F7 to switch to this session
>
>     [seat0:bob]
>     autologin-user=bob
>     # this session will be started on VT 8
>     # use Ctrl-Alt-F8 to switch to this session
>
> (a colon is not a legal character in a seat name, so it can be used to
> add a disambiguator)
>
> >> [Seat:Foo] -> seatFoo (the former) is my preferred option.
> >>
> >> If Robert isn't opposed to this xdg-seat=auto idea, and you feel like
> >> coding it up, feel free to push it to the
> >> lp:~ubuntu-multiseat/lightdm/multiseat branch.
> >
> > OK. I'll try it.
>
> Don't forget to update the spec wiki page.  I'd put this in the "nice to
> have" category since users can work around not having it.
>
> -Richard
>