new user creation module in firstboot

[Ben Konrath]

On Wed, 2007-10-03 at 17:51 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, 2007-10-03 at 15:34 -0400, Ben Konrath wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm working on a new user creation module for the new and improved
> > firstboot. I created a little video to give people an idea of the UI
> > interaction:
> > 
> > http://bagu.org/scratch/createuser.ogv
> 
> This looks pretty smooth, thanks a lot for working on this. My first
> reaction is that this is not something that should be limited to
> firstboot; ideally stuff like that should be able to run from the
> desktop environment when adding / deleting / managing users, right? 

As Colin pointed out, the goal here is to allow users to create accounts
at more obvious places - at login, when switching users, at firstboot -
and share the code / UI for this. This firstboot module was just an easy
place for me to start experimenting. So yeah, having the ability to run
an account creation app inside the desktop environment is definitely
what we want.

> If we want that we probably need to look at existing functionality in
> the desktop.. that includes system-config-users (Fedora specific) and
> the GNOME About Me dialog and how this would fit in. I'd probably say
> that we want to replace both. And in the same breath I would approach
> the GNOME community to get this done upstream so all distros can rally
> around it (share development and maintenance efforts). What is your take
> on that?

I think that seems like a good plan.

> Also, if we want this in the desktop environment (and I think we do) it
> needs to be written in a way that separates the mechanism (would run
> privileged, e.g. uid 0 however locked down by SELinux or whatever) from
> the user interface (would run unprivileged user). I'd probably suggest
> to use PolicyKit [1] (for flexible fine grained lock down) and D-Bus
> (for activating the mechanism) for that, both of these (especially PK)
> are kinda written for this kind of thing [2].

Yes, I agree. I just read those pages and they will be a good starting
point. Thanks for the info :) 

> Finally, it would be good to have this feature as a "Component" so it's
> easy to embed into other applications; e.g. if I want to write a OS
> installer app, then I can easily embed this component. Same, FWIW, goes
> for the work we're doing on the clock applet and in the future any
> system configuration bits. I think firstboot has /some/ notion of
> plug-in architecture but actually haven't reviewed it since I'm not sure
> it's appropriate in an environment where the UI should run unprivileged.
> But it just might work.

Yeah, firstboot does have a plugin architecture so making a component is
probably what I want. Can you elaborate on what you mean by component? -
What technologies should I be looking at using?

Thanks, Ben