GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 593749
NetworkManager settings should be shared between users
Last modified: 2009-09-04 13:29:53 UTC
Let's assume a user A is logged in on a system and can control the network through nm-applet. Now let's assume he leaves and locks his screen. Now user B comes in, and logs in as B. Nm-applet doesn't start, with the following error message: ** (nm-applet:2636): WARNING **: <WARN> applet_dbus_manager_start_service(): Could not acquire the NetworkManagerUserSettings service as it is already taken. Return: 3 This is clearly bad because user A may not be present, and B may have to change network settings. The only workaround is to reboot the computer, assuming user B has the rights to do so. The conclusion is that either all user should concurrently be given the right to alter network settings, or that this privilege should be given to the currently active user via consolekit.
This is being worked on; but not quite in the way you describe. User settings are *per-user*, so if you want to share settings among users you need to make that setting "Available to all users" in the connection editor, at which point it becomes a system setting and all users who have privileges can modify it. The applet is getting (slowly) fixed up for fast user switching, where all users will be able to see network state and select /system/ connections, but obviously won't be able to select some other user's connections, because that user did not explicitly make those connections available to all other users. The nm-applet in the "active" session (as determined by ConsoleKit) will be one that NetworkManager pulls user settings from. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 565293 ***