Multiple gnome sessions/panels on console and on VNC

[Eli Barzilay]

Starting gnome-session in a VNC session is impossible if it's already
running on the console.

I can run gnome-panel on the VNC session, but that has lots of
problems -- for example, the desktop switcher refuses to appear in the
VNC session, and a panel that I have on the bottom-right corner of the
(1024x768) screen in the VNC session makes the same panel on the (much
bigger) console screen hop over to the same position which is now in
the middle of the screen.

I've even gave up on any useful corner panel (reverted to the ancient
Sawfish pager thingy instead) -- and there are still an annoying
problem: every time the VNC session is closed, the panel is trying to
resurrect itself on the console, which leads to an error dialog that
there's a pannel there allready -- and requires clicking OK about 120
times for it to go away.

Is there any sane way to use Gnome on both my console and a separate
VNC session?

(I don't believe that I'm the only one left that is crazy enough to
have two sessions running on a single machine...)

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!

[David Zeuthen]

On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 15:22 -0500, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>  (I don't believe that I'm the only one left that is crazy
> enough to
>  have two sessions running on a single machine...) 
No, actually we're planning this for Fedora 7

 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/FastUserSwitching

as I've announced on fedora-devel-list some time ago. It sorta works in
Rawhide with fusa, see

 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=213121

except for the problems noted in that Wiki page.

    David

[Eli Barzilay]

David Zeuthen <david(a)fubar.dk&gt; writes:

>  On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 15:22 -0500, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>  > (I don't believe that I'm the only one left that is crazy enough to
>  > have two sessions running on a single machine...)
>  
>  No, actually we're planning this for Fedora 7
>  
>   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/FastUserSwitching
>  
>  as I've announced on fedora-devel-list some time ago. It sorta works in
>  Rawhide with fusa, see
>  
>   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=213121
>  
>  except for the problems noted in that Wiki page. 
IIUC, this is about multiple sessions on a single machine owned by
different users -- which is different than what I'm talking about.  My
problem is running multiple sessions (console + VNC) from a *single*
user.  The problem is that the gnome panel is trying its best to keep
all instances connected: the geometry of one session leaks to others,
and killing the panel in one session makes it want to restart itself
in another.

Maybe my horribly stupid idea for a solution will demonstrate what I
wanted: I tried running

  HOME=~/.vnc gnome-session

to get my VNC gnome to be disconnected from the console session.  It
didn't work because there are many other communication channels which
gnome components were using behind my back.  (Unsurprisingly, this was
a catastrophe on many other levels, but the idea should be clear...)

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!

[David Zeuthen]

On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 23:51 -0500, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>  IIUC, this is about multiple sessions on a single machine owned by
>  different users -- which is different than what I'm talking about. 
Yea, I realized that after sending the mail, sorry.

>    My
>  problem is running multiple sessions (console + VNC) from a *single*
>  user.  The problem is that the gnome panel is trying its best to keep
>  all instances connected: the geometry of one session leaks to others,
>  and killing the panel in one session makes it want to restart itself
>  in another. 
I think it's a bug if this doesn't work; suggest to file bug and perhaps
mention the bug numbers here? Thanks!

     David

[Eli Barzilay]

David Zeuthen <david(a)fubar.dk&gt; writes:

>  On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 23:51 -0500, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>  > My problem is running multiple sessions (console + VNC) from a
>  > *single* user.  The problem is that the gnome panel is trying its
>  > best to keep all instances connected: the geometry of one session
>  > leaks to others, and killing the panel in one session makes it
>  > want to restart itself in another.
>  
>  I think it's a bug if this doesn't work; suggest to file bug and
>  perhaps mention the bug numbers here? Thanks! 
Done:
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=217730

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!