remove "shutdown" option from gnome system (not gdm!) menu?

[Kenny Gow]

Berna Massingill wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 07:22:18PM -0500, Chris Mohler wrote:
> 
>>>  Wow.
>>>  
>>>  I installed 'pessulus' via yum.  When run as root, it allows one to
>>>  remove the "log out" from the "System" menu.  BUT, that also removes
>>>  the "Shut Down" item - apparently, the two are bound somehow.
> 
> First let me say a "thanks for pursuing this"!  we're not at a great
> solution yet, but it's nice to get some response ....
> 
> I also installed pessulus, started it up, and observed that the lockdown
> option I actually wanted wasn't available.
> 
>>>  Even though the "Log Out" function departs the menu, you can still do:
>>>  gnome-session-save --kill --gui
>>>  from the command line and it (seemingly) logs out the user cleanly.
>>>  You could add a new item to the menu or panel with that command.  Not
>>>  pretty, but maybe it would work.
> 
> This actually sounds kind of promising ....  I worry a bit, though,
> that if people [*] can't easily figure out how to log out they'll just
> reboot, which would defeat the purpose of this change.  However,
> it might be worth a try.
> 
> [*] The people who use the machines in question range from Unix-savvy
> types who would figure something out to newbies who -- might not.
> 
>>>  Seems odd that you can't remove the shutdown item without disabling logout.
> 
> My guess is that the people who designed this thing figured that if
> you can log out, you can get to the GDM Actions menu, which has a 
> shutdown option, so therefore there's no point in just disabling the
> shutdown menu item in a GNOME session.  Plausible??
> 
> I guess they weren't thinking about putting "shutdown" and "log out"
> right next to each other on a menu would make it too easy to click
> the wrong one.
> 
> What bugs me is that this stuff appears to be buried somewhere that
> even sysadmin types can't change.  Maybe it all makes sense to people
> who know something about the internals of GNOME, though.
> 
> (I have similar, um, issues? with what GDM does when you choose
> something other than "Default" from the "Sessions" menu.  But maybe
> that should be a rant for another time.)
> 
> -- blm
> 
Interesting that you ask to remove Shutdown from the Gnome system
menu without removing it from the GDM login menu because I only know
how to remove both together.

System | Administration | Login Screen will run gdmsetup.
On the Local tab, if you uncheck "Show Actions Menu" then Shutdown
and Reboot will be removed from the GDM login menu and Shutdown
will be removed from the System menu. I do not know how to
decouple these. You will have to logout (and possibly restart X)
for this to take effect.

In FC5, the config file that is changed is /etc/gdm/custom.conf
Before FC5, the config file was /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf

--Kenny