Hi folks!
So, during Fedora 32 Final blocker review, a bug relating to "user switching" came up for review:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1817708
I dug into the question of whether we have tended to consider the "log in / log out / shut down / reboot" criterion as covering user switching, and found that this issue is actually kinda outstanding and unresolved for a long time.
Back in January 2015, we kinda provisionally decided that we *did* want to block on user switching bugs, by accepting this one as a blocker during a review meeting:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1184933
kparal was detailed to propose clearly adding it to the criteria, and he duly drafted up a change and mailed it to the relevant lists - test@, kde@ and desktop@:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2015-January/124811.html https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/kde/2015-January/014175.html https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2015-January/011558.html
However, here things foundered a bit because there was some opposition to the idea. The discussion is spread across the three lists, but my reading is broadly that there were distinct camps in favour of and against blocking on user switching bugs. Prominent "pro-blocking" folks were Michael Catanzaro and Kevin Kofler. Prominent "anti-blocking" folks were Matthias Clasen, Rex Dieter and Josh Boyer. Obviously that's a particularly awkward split because we have pro- and anti- folks on both the desktop and KDE teams.
The discussion was pretty active, but in the end it sort of petered out without any definite conclusion being reached. The draft changes Kamil proposed were never made, and the criterion remained as it was before.
For the purposes of our specific F32 blocker proposal we decided to adopt the principle that, since there was a discussion that clearly did not reach a consensus that user switching *should* be release-blocking, we could not really treat it as such, and thus we rejected the bug as a blocker. But I figured it would probably be a good idea to bring the topic up again and try to come to a definite conclusion this time.
So, once again: do we think it makes sense to consider desktop user switching - that is, switching between multiple active desktop sessions for different users, without logging out and in - as release-blocking? Has anyone who was active in the previous discussion changed their mind on this?
I suppose one question that could potentially arise is whether we could treat it as release-blocking for GNOME but not for KDE, or vice versa. In general I think it's a good goal to try and keep our standards similar across our release-blocking desktops, but I do think we could at least consider that, if the discussion seemed to be going in that direction.
On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 at 20:14, Adam Williamson adamwill@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi folks!
So, during Fedora 32 Final blocker review, a bug relating to "user switching" came up for review:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1817708
I dug into the question of whether we have tended to consider the "log in / log out / shut down / reboot" criterion as covering user switching, and found that this issue is actually kinda outstanding and unresolved for a long time.
This is about the KillUserProcesses yes/no debate [1], right? Some context [2].
[1] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/kde@lists.fedoraproject.org/th... [2] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/kde@lists.fedoraproject.org/me...
Iñaki
On Tue, 2020-04-14 at 21:20 +0200, Iñaki Ucar wrote:
On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 at 20:14, Adam Williamson adamwill@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi folks!
So, during Fedora 32 Final blocker review, a bug relating to "user switching" came up for review:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1817708
I dug into the question of whether we have tended to consider the "log in / log out / shut down / reboot" criterion as covering user switching, and found that this issue is actually kinda outstanding and unresolved for a long time.
This is about the KillUserProcesses yes/no debate [1], right?
No.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 8:14 PM Adam Williamson adamwill@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi folks!
So, during Fedora 32 Final blocker review, a bug relating to "user switching" came up for review:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1817708
I dug into the question of whether we have tended to consider the "log in / log out / shut down / reboot" criterion as covering user switching, and found that this issue is actually kinda outstanding and unresolved for a long time.
Back in January 2015, we kinda provisionally decided that we *did* want to block on user switching bugs, by accepting this one as a blocker during a review meeting:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1184933
kparal was detailed to propose clearly adding it to the criteria, and he duly drafted up a change and mailed it to the relevant lists - test@, kde@ and desktop@:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2015-January/124811.html https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/kde/2015-January/014175.html https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2015-January/011558.html
However, here things foundered a bit because there was some opposition to the idea. The discussion is spread across the three lists, but my reading is broadly that there were distinct camps in favour of and against blocking on user switching bugs. Prominent "pro-blocking" folks were Michael Catanzaro and Kevin Kofler. Prominent "anti-blocking" folks were Matthias Clasen, Rex Dieter and Josh Boyer. Obviously that's a particularly awkward split because we have pro- and anti- folks on both the desktop and KDE teams.
The discussion was pretty active, but in the end it sort of petered out without any definite conclusion being reached. The draft changes Kamil proposed were never made, and the criterion remained as it was before.
For the purposes of our specific F32 blocker proposal we decided to adopt the principle that, since there was a discussion that clearly did not reach a consensus that user switching *should* be release-blocking, we could not really treat it as such, and thus we rejected the bug as a blocker. But I figured it would probably be a good idea to bring the topic up again and try to come to a definite conclusion this time.
So, once again: do we think it makes sense to consider desktop user switching - that is, switching between multiple active desktop sessions for different users, without logging out and in - as release-blocking? Has anyone who was active in the previous discussion changed their mind on this?
I use the functionality daily, so I'm biased, same as mattdm. I consider it really a basic desktop functionality. On our home laptop, my wife never logs out. Why would she, she just closes the lid and the laptop goes to sleep. When I want to do something, I simply log it as my own user, do what I need, and again shut the lid. I reboot the laptop twice a month when I apply updates. There is almost never just a single user logged in. The idea that we only validate Fedora for a single-user scenario, where the whole system can be used just by a single user at any moment, feels... almost obscene given our UNIX heritage :-) In the past when we had some user switching issues, it was a huge pain for me, because my wife will never remember Ctrl+Alt+Fx shortcuts to workaround a framebuffer switching problem. And constantly making sure the other person is not logged in, and asking him/her to log out if he/she is, is nothing but a headache. It makes the home laptop use case completely broken. Not to mention it's really hard to answer her questions about why we're using something that broken.
In the past, there were concerns about graphics drivers quality. They have hopefully improved. But I'll repeat again - we have safeguards against issues that affect just a portion of our hardware. We can be explicit about it in the criterion, or we can have it implied from our standard procedures. If the bug only happens on e.g. nouveau, we don't need to block on it (especially given its maintenance status and Nvidia's zero help). If the bug only happens on a single Intel GPU family, ditto. If the bug happens to all radeon or all intel users, well, we would definitely have a conversation about it. If the bug happens to everyone, all bare metal and also including VMs, that's a clear indication that the problem is not in drivers but in our software, and would be a blocker. It's also possible to remove drivers from the picture completely and only cover the last mentioned scenario ("happens on all bare metal and VMs") in the criterion, if developers desire it. It would be weak, but would definitely be a step in the right direction.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 2:14 PM Adam Williamson adamwill@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Hi folks!
So, during Fedora 32 Final blocker review, a bug relating to "user switching" came up for review:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1817708
I dug into the question of whether we have tended to consider the "log in / log out / shut down / reboot" criterion as covering user switching, and found that this issue is actually kinda outstanding and unresolved for a long time.
Back in January 2015, we kinda provisionally decided that we *did* want to block on user switching bugs, by accepting this one as a blocker during a review meeting:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1184933
kparal was detailed to propose clearly adding it to the criteria, and he duly drafted up a change and mailed it to the relevant lists - test@, kde@ and desktop@:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2015-January/124811.html https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/kde/2015-January/014175.html https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2015-January/011558.html
However, here things foundered a bit because there was some opposition to the idea. The discussion is spread across the three lists, but my reading is broadly that there were distinct camps in favour of and against blocking on user switching bugs. Prominent "pro-blocking" folks were Michael Catanzaro and Kevin Kofler. Prominent "anti-blocking" folks were Matthias Clasen, Rex Dieter and Josh Boyer. Obviously that's a particularly awkward split because we have pro- and anti- folks on both the desktop and KDE teams.
The discussion was pretty active, but in the end it sort of petered out without any definite conclusion being reached. The draft changes Kamil proposed were never made, and the criterion remained as it was before.
For the purposes of our specific F32 blocker proposal we decided to adopt the principle that, since there was a discussion that clearly did not reach a consensus that user switching *should* be release-blocking, we could not really treat it as such, and thus we rejected the bug as a blocker. But I figured it would probably be a good idea to bring the topic up again and try to come to a definite conclusion this time.
So, once again: do we think it makes sense to consider desktop user switching - that is, switching between multiple active desktop sessions for different users, without logging out and in - as release-blocking? Has anyone who was active in the previous discussion changed their mind on this?
I suppose one question that could potentially arise is whether we could treat it as release-blocking for GNOME but not for KDE, or vice versa. In general I think it's a good goal to try and keep our standards similar across our release-blocking desktops, but I do think we could at least consider that, if the discussion seemed to be going in that direction.
Unfortunately I missed the discussion because of $DAYJOB stuff...
From my perspective in Workstation WG and member of KDE SIG, I would say that we should consider this release blocking. This is a somewhat common use-case on family/shared computers that we should have working.
(I am a tiny bit biased, I've set up several Fedora systems where this feature has been used heavily...)
-- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
I think it's probably time to consider this release blocking, with caveat. It's been known for quite awhile that lingering processes makes user switching under plasma problematic, so this problem needs to be solved first as a prerequisite. One possible solution is https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KillUserProcesses_by_default (but I don't insist on that particular fix, just that it is addressed somehow first).
Il 18/04/20 15:40, Rex Dieter ha scritto:
I think it's probably time to consider this release blocking, with caveat. It's been known for quite awhile that lingering processes makes user switching under plasma problematic, so this problem needs to be solved first as a prerequisite. One possible solution is https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KillUserProcesses_by_default (but I don't insist on that particular fix, just that it is addressed somehow first).
One thing it's not clear to me: are we discussing about user switching or logout/login?
As a user I would like to be able to switch from user A to user B and when I switch back to user A I want to have all my documents and apps running as before switching users. This KillUserProcesses_by_default seems to me more like logging out user A and login as user B, so when logging in again ad user A I will have a new, blank session.
Maybe I'm wrong (for sure...), but current user switching problem doesn't seem related to killing processes to me. What I observed is this behavior:
- login user A - you get a Plasma session on VT1 (default) - try to switch user - login again as user A - instead of logging in again to the already opened session on VT1, a new Plasma session is created on VT2 (and it doesn't work)
SDDM should remember that user A is already logged in on VT1 and use the existing session, instead of opening another one, but this doesn't happen.
Mattia
On Sat, 2020-04-18 at 15:33 +0000, Mattia Verga wrote:
Il 18/04/20 15:40, Rex Dieter ha scritto:
I think it's probably time to consider this release blocking, with caveat. It's been known for quite awhile that lingering processes makes user switching under plasma problematic, so this problem needs to be solved first as a prerequisite. One possible solution is https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KillUserProcesses_by_default (but I don't insist on that particular fix, just that it is addressed somehow first).
One thing it's not clear to me: are we discussing about user switching or logout/login?
As a user I would like to be able to switch from user A to user B and when I switch back to user A I want to have all my documents and apps running as before switching users. This KillUserProcesses_by_default seems to me more like logging out user A and login as user B, so when logging in again ad user A I will have a new, blank session.
Maybe I'm wrong (for sure...), but current user switching problem doesn't seem related to killing processes to me. What I observed is this behavior:
- login user A
- you get a Plasma session on VT1 (default)
- try to switch user
- login again as user A
- instead of logging in again to the already opened session on VT1, a
new Plasma session is created on VT2 (and it doesn't work)
SDDM should remember that user A is already logged in on VT1 and use the existing session, instead of opening another one, but this doesn't happen.
IMHO that's a strange interpretation of what user switching is. It would never occur to me that I would be reconnecting to the same session. Why would I do that? If I switch sessions I want them to be independent of each other, otherwise I don't see the point.
poc
Il 18/04/20 17:41, Patrick O'Callaghan ha scritto:
IMHO that's a strange interpretation of what user switching is. It would never occur to me that I would be reconnecting to the same session. Why would I do that? If I switch sessions I want them to be independent of each other, otherwise I don't see the point.
poc _______________________________________________
My bad, I didn't explain well what I understand.
Let's say I'm user A and I'm working on a document. Now user B needs a quick login, so I let them to switch user to their account. When they finish I switch back into my user and I want to be able to work again on my previously opened document - I should not have lost all my work when I switched users.
The steps I described were just a corner case to describe what I currently observe when switching users: even if I don't really switch between users, but I choose "switch user" and the login again on my user, I see another session opened on VT2 instead of logging me back on existing session on VT1.
Mattia
On Sat, 2020-04-18 at 16:28 +0000, Mattia Verga wrote:
Il 18/04/20 17:41, Patrick O'Callaghan ha scritto:
IMHO that's a strange interpretation of what user switching is. It would never occur to me that I would be reconnecting to the same session. Why would I do that? If I switch sessions I want them to be independent of each other, otherwise I don't see the point.
poc _______________________________________________
My bad, I didn't explain well what I understand.
Let's say I'm user A and I'm working on a document. Now user B needs a quick login, so I let them to switch user to their account. When they finish I switch back into my user and I want to be able to work again on my previously opened document - I should not have lost all my work when I switched users.
That's also what I mean.
The steps I described were just a corner case to describe what I currently observe when switching users: even if I don't really switch between users, but I choose "switch user" and the login again on my user, I see another session opened on VT2 instead of logging me back on existing session on VT1.
That's what I don't mean. If I switch to the same user on VT2 I want a *new* session. If I switch back to VT1 I continue with the old session. If both VTs are in the same login session, I don't see the point of this if we already have virtual desktops and Activities (in fact I've never really seen the point of Activities either, but never mind).
poc
On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 7:09 PM Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
The steps I described were just a corner case to describe what I currently observe when switching users: even if I don't really switch between users, but I choose "switch user" and the login again on my user, I see another session opened on VT2 instead of logging me back on existing session on VT1.
That's what I don't mean. If I switch to the same user on VT2 I want a *new* session. If I switch back to VT1 I continue with the old session. If both VTs are in the same login session, I don't see the point of this if we already have virtual desktops and Activities (in fact I've never really seen the point of Activities either, but never mind).
If I understand this correctly, one use case speaks about switching user A and user B, 1 session per each. The other use case speaks about 2 different sessions for user A. User switching, as discussed here, is only concerned about the former case, *different* users having a single session each. Multiple graphical sessions for the same user is not something we'd want to block the release on, I believe.
Also, as usual with our criteria, user switching would only be required to work if it was offered by the desktop UI. If KDE decides to remove or hide that option for whatever reason, we'd of course not require it to have it. Similarly, we'd not mandate how exactly it is implemented - if I can switch back to user A existing session only if I type "I❤️KDE" as my password, otherwise I get a new session, that's fine, as long as it's clearly communicated. KDE can set any defaults it wants.
If I understand this correctly, one use case speaks about switching user A and user B, 1 session per each. The other use case speaks about 2 different sessions for user A. User switching, as discussed here, is only concerned about the former case, *different* users having a single session each.
+1
Multiple graphical sessions for the same user is not something we'd want to block the release on, I believe.
Well, originally I thought this to be something unrealistic, but in fact, if user A is running a desktop session and wants to connect from a different location via VNC for example, they might also want another desktop session in the VNC. But we do not have any blocking criteria against sharing a desktop via VNC or something like that at the moment AFAIK.
Also, as usual with our criteria, user switching would only be required to work if it was offered by the desktop UI. If KDE decides to remove or hide that option for whatever reason, we'd of course not require it to have it. Similarly, we'd not mandate how exactly it is implemented - if I can switch back to user A existing session only if I type "I❤️KDE" as my password, otherwise I get a new session, that's fine, as long as it's clearly communicated. KDE can set any defaults it wants.
+1
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Strictly speaking, we're talking only about user switching. My bad for confusing matters by bringing up the related-but different issue. So, that said, I withdraw the caveat, and will unconditionally support user switching as an important feature worth blocking for.
What you describe is a corner-case, that should be handled better.
-
Adam Williamson -
Iñaki Ucar -
Kamil Paral -
Lukas Ruzicka -
Mattia Verga -
Neal Gompa -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Rex Dieter