disable shutdown/reboot in GNOME logout menu

[Ben Steeves]

Hi Folks,

I've googled around for this a fair bit but haven't found anything
that seems to work:

I have a lab full of machines running Fedora on which I need to
disable the logout and reboot options from the GNOME logout menu.  
These lab machines are used to run long-running
mathematical/scientific apps, and when they get shut down by a
well-meaning person at the console, it can affect the work of other
students.

I trolled through gconf-editor, but couldn't find anything that popped
out at me.

I know the argument that it doesn't matter if shutdown/reboot appear
on the menu since the user can just hit the power button, but there's
an important psychological difference.  A user is more likely to chose
"shutdown" from a menu than hit the button on an up-and-running server
that doesn't provide the option to shutdown.

A post I found on-line suggested that chmod'ing /sbin/shutdown and
/sbin/reboot to 0700 would fix the problem, but that didn't do it. 
Another suggested deleting the shutdown and reboot users, but I don't
see that they're related to the GNOME logout menu.

Any suggestions?
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[Christoph Wickert]

Am Donnerstag, den 11.08.2005, 11:21 -0300 schrieb Ben Steeves:
>  Hi Folks,
>  
>  I've googled around for this a fair bit but haven't found anything
>  that seems to work:
>  
>  I have a lab full of machines running Fedora on which I need to
>  disable the logout and reboot options from the GNOME logout menu.  
>  These lab machines are used to run long-running
>  mathematical/scientific apps, and when they get shut down by a
>  well-meaning person at the console, it can affect the work of other
>  students.
>  
>  I trolled through gconf-editor, but couldn't find anything that popped
>  out at me.
>   
[snipped]
>  
>  Any suggestions? 
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/desktop-guide...

Christoph

[Ben Steeves]

On 8/11/05, Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert(a)gmx.de&gt; wrote:
>  
>
> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/desktop-guide...
>   
Aha!  Many thanks!

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[Ben Steeves]

On 8/11/05, Ben Steeves <ben.steeves(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On 8/11/05, Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert(a)gmx.de&gt;
> wrote:
>  >
>  >
> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/desktop-guide...
>  > 
It appears I was too hasty... there are gconf keys for disabling the
logout and lock-screen options, but those are the ones I want to
_keep_.  These aren't kiosks.

The ones I want to _remove_ are the shutdown and reboot options, and
there doesn't seem to be keys for that.

There is a key, /apps/gnome-session/options/logout_prompt, which can
disable the logout dialog altogether.  I guess I'll just have to go
with that.

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[Bryn M. Reeves]

On Thu, 2005-08-11 at 11:21 -0300, Ben Steeves wrote: 
>  Any suggestions? 
Hi Ben,
To be completely safe, there are a couple of things to do here. 

You need to change gdm's config to remove the menu options.
Open /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf in a text editor and find the [greeter]
section. Make sure there is a line like this:

[greeter]
...
SystemMenu=false

This removes the shutdown/reboot options from the log-in screen and the
log-out dialog. Alternatively run gdmconfig and provide the root
password, then uncheck the 'Show action menu' option on the security
tab. 

To prevent users opening a terminal and running poweroff or reboot,
delete or move these files:

/etc/security/console.apps/poweroff
/etc/security/console.apps/reboot

If your machines use ACPI, you will also need to disable ACPI-driven
shutdowns from the power button. 

On more to go now, to prevent someone switching to a virtual console and
hitting ctrl-alt-del, we need to edit inittab. Find the line that looks
like this:

# Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now

And change it to read:

# Disallow CTRL-ALT-DELETE
ca::ctrlaltdel:/bin/echo "ctrl-alt-delete has been disabled"

(You can use /bin/true, or /usr/bin/logger etc. here instead if you wish
- just watch out if someone tries ctrl-alt-del before /usr is mounted :)

Kind regards,

>  -- 
>  Ben Steeves                     _                    bcs(a)metacon.ca
>   The ASCII ribbon campaign     ( )            ben.steeves(a)gmail.com
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>   
--
Bryn M. Reeves
Instructor II  -  Red Hat Global Learning Services EMEA
 
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