Why Restart & Shutdown Buttons on login screen

[Robin Laing]

Berna Massingill wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 09:31:34AM -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> 
>>>  On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 15:47 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>>  > On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 07:16 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
>>>  > > On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 14:02 +0530, "Rahul Tidke" wrote:
>>>  > > > Hello All,
>>>  > > >   I wonder about these buttons on gnome desktop; do we really need these
>>>  > > > buttons on login screen? Reboot and shutdown allowed before login for any
>>>  > > > user??
>>>  > > > 
>>>  > > > Thank You.
>>>  > > I find these buttons very useful. My machine double boots. Sometimes I
>>>  > > make a mistake  and allow the machine to boot to the wrong OS. Using
>>>  > > these buttons I can correct the situation. Other times I boot my machine
>>>  > > and I realize before I login that I really wanted to shutdown the
>>>  > > machine.
>>>  > 
>>>  > "your" machine => single-user environment.
>>>  
>>>  > 
>>>  > > But I confused by your question. How does this extra functionality hurt
>>>  > > you or anyone else?
>>>  > Do you expect arbitrary users to switch off an unattended ("free")
>>>  > machine in a lab's or an office's machine pool, a classical workstation
>>>  > scenario?
>>>  
>>>  I assume said machine does not have an on off button. We have this situation
>>>   in the lab at the college; 100 of them. Asign warns people not to do what 
>>>  you think they should not do. And it mostly works.
> 
> Emphasis on "mostly" :-).  (I work at the college in question.)  
> 
>>>  It is especially important in this environment because we have
>>>  multi-machine programs running on machines that look like they are just
>>>  sitting there.
> 
> Quite.  Training people not to reboot at the first sign of
> trouble has not been 100% effective either.  The multi-machine
> programs Aaron mentions sometimes need to run for days or weeks to
> produce results, so reboots and shutdowns have real consequences.
> Eventually the author of these programs found time to add a
> checkpointing capability.  User training only goes so far, after
> all, and mistakes are sometimes made.
> 
>>>  > Q: How to disable these buttons permanently?
> 
> I'm hoping someone will come up with an answer to this question.
> The "shutdown" menu option (once one is logged in) is particularly
> a problem in that it seems all too easy to select accidentally
> when one is trying to log out.
> 
> -- blm
> 

I have disabled mine at home on the desktop machine.

I modified my /etc/gdm/custom.conf file

This is older but will point you in the right direction.

It is from this mailing list back in 2005.

http://linux.derkeiler.com/pdf/Mailing-Lists/Fedora/2005-08/1928.pdf


If you look at the /etc/gdm/custom.conf file, it references 
/usr/share/gdm/defaults.conf file.  Take a look there.

I have not played with this for some time so I cannot remember the full 
settings and I am not at home.
-- 
Robin Laing