GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 150849
[PATCH] new feature: remote shutdown
Last modified: 2009-01-19 20:20:25 UTC
This patch permits to use the shutdown button of GDM when the user is using a remote console (via XDMCP). As a consequence, the X Terminal will reboot or power off thanks to SSH. This is a new feature written by: - Francis francis@revolutionlinux.com - Alban alban@revolutionlinux.com The patch is available in [1] and a SRPM for Mandrake in [2]. [1] http://linux.ensimag.fr/~acrequy/bazard/gdm-2.4.4.7-non-local-action.patch.bz2 [2] http://linux.ensimag.fr/~acrequy/bazard/gdm-2.4.4.7-7mdk.src.rpm
Created attachment 30860 [details] [review] The patch for remote shutdown
No news for this bug. There is a solution for this patch ? sumitted or not ?
AFAIK the patch is not submitted because the maintenor don't want new features that can cause new bugs. And I don't have the time to debug my patch, if any. So I guess the patch will stay in bugzilla in case someone want it but won't be applied until someone has the time to check if this patch is good enough for GDM. If you need this feature, look at: http://linux.ensimag.fr/~acrequy/wiki/index.php/GDM MILLE-XTERM (hosted on sourceforge) use this patch. The last version of this GDM-patch can be found inside the MILLE-XTERM package.
Created attachment 36598 [details] [review] New version of the remote-shutdown-xterminals patch This is the "new" version of my remote-shutdown-xterminals patch. This patch was created the Mon Aug 30 2004 for the MILLE-XTERM project, but I forget to add it to this bugzilla. Hope this will be usefull if someone want this feature. This patch permit to launch a command defined in the GDM config file when the user press the shutdown button on its (XDMCP-based) xterminal. The command is run on the server and it runs SSH to shutdown the xterminal. Of course, this will work only if the xterminal is configured to accept the root ssh connection without a password. If you use this patch, you need to uncomment the command in the gdm config file. I have disabled this new feature by default in order to have the same behaviour than the previous version of GDM. So the user don't have this feature if he doesn't want it. Any comment about this patch is appreciated.
George Lebl had this to say to me in response to this patch. EEEEEEEEEEEK! This patch must not go in, it's full of security issues. It must be worked out first. Firstly it seems to default into allowing remote shutdown which can NEVER EVER be the default, second you would have to allow reboot from an ssh login on the host without password, which is totally nuts (that is you'd have to allow root to have an unencrypted RSA auth onto the host). As an example of the blatant disrespect for security just see the line that goes: +DEBUG=1 + +if [ -n "$DEBUG" ] ; then + echo >> /tmp/gdm.log + date >> /tmp/gdm.log + echo "$1 $2" >> /tmp/gdm.log +fi It's also wrong in the way it modifies the themes. The system button will be on even if remote shutdown is not allowed etc. It doesn't modify the F10 menu, doesn't modify gdmlogin. This patch has a LONG way to go before being safe. Primarily, it needs to be such that by default things work as now, remote shutdown must be a very optional feature. It's another crack feature. Most recent bioses will actually allow the reset/off button on the chassis to shut down (FC3 does this), so there's no need for this totally whacked out setup, that introduces security holes. The coding is ad hoc, insecure, only works on special setups, and is of low quality.
Note the attached patches are stored in bz format, so you need to download them and save them with a .bz2 suffix and bunzip2 them to see them.
hmm.... alban, comments? or should this be closed as wontfix / incomplete, as we haven't seen a reworked patch here?
Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!