XFCE User Switching

[Charlie]

Hello all,

I recently bought an Intel NUC system to set up as "TV PC." FreeBSD 10
runs quite nicely on it, by the way!

Since this computer is going to be hooked up to my TV, I need to be able
to switch user accounts easily.

My desktop of choice is XFCE. I can't seem to get user switching to work,
though. I have GDM installed and enabled, as I thought this was a
requirement, but it still doesn't work. When I click on the "Switch User"
option, the screen just fades to my screensaver. I uninstalled
xscreensaver to see what would happen, and then it just flickers a few
times and nothing happens.

Typing "gdmflexiserver -ls" also just makes the screen flicker.

Any suggetions?

Thanks!

Charlie

c...@sdf.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org
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[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Thu, 20 Feb 2014 03:49:55 +0000 (UTC)
Charlie <c...@SDF.ORG> wrote:

> My desktop of choice is XFCE. I can't seem to get user switching to

I do not have XFCE running anymore but if I remember right, you just
log out and then log in again under a new user name.

If you only want to start new programs under a different account, just
use su in an xterm.

Erich

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 12:30 +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> If you only want to start new programs under a different account, just
> use su in an xterm.

Isn't for FreeBSD something like e.g.
xhost +
needed, assumed the OP want's to run a GUI app by another account? For
Linux it is.

[Matthew Seaman]

On 20/02/2014 12:08, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 12:30 +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote:
>> If you only want to start new programs under a different account, just
>> use su in an xterm.
>
> Isn't for FreeBSD something like e.g.
> xhost +
> needed, assumed the OP want's to run a GUI app by another account? For
> Linux it is.

Please do not propagate the advice to use 'xhost +'. It's a really bad
idea[*], along the lines of 'just chmod everything to world writable' --
letting just anyone connect to your X screen means that it becomes
trivially easy for an attacker to snoop on anything you're doing
including getting the text of any passwords you type in, etc. etc.

Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the xauth(1) man page, for
learning how to grant the minimum necessary privilege is the first step
towards righteous security.

Matthew

[*] Especially if your X server is network accessible, as it usually is
by default.

--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey