gdm Create User

[Richi Plana]

On Sat, 2007-10-06 at 13:58 -0500, Douglas McClendon wrote:
> Richi Plana wrote:
> > How about adding the functionality to create user accounts (local or
> > network) at the gdm login screen?
> 
> I think a cool *optional* functionality would be-
> 
> Whenever gdm receives an unknown username, *automatically* create that 
> account as new, and log them in.
> 
> Perhaps the way to implement your functionality, would be to have the 
> above, but after login attempt, a 15 second timeout prompt pops up (with 
> cancel), notifying that it was an unrecognized login, and asking for the 
>   adminstrative password to confirm account creation.  And then perhaps 
> a checkbox to enable/disable continuation of login for that user.  Then 
> you get back to my functionality with an administrative setting that 
> just disables the popping up of the confirmation/authentication dialog.

Well, that certainly sounds like a smart system ... and I'm all for
computers trying to be smarter than their users (if they can do it
successfully). But why add a timeout? I'm assuming finding out a list of
users from the console isn't a security issue (since they're displayed
as a list by GDM) so why not make the computer think one of two things
has happened: 1) the user mistyped the username or 2) the user wants to
create a new user. The system could ask which and ask for the root
password or directory administrator's password if it was a request for
the creation of users.

It's not intuitive, though, so maybe a "Login (existing or create a new
one)" at the prompt would be nice.

Maybe then we could remove the "Create User" account at firstboot.
--

Richi Plana