Comment 4 for bug 264835

Hi,

The guest session works by launching the flexiserver. I believe this can only
be launched by a logged in user, and that seems to be a design decision,
from the README.Debian:

"Just call /usr/share/gdm/guest-session/guest-session-launch to start the
session; this only works if you already have a gdm session, though, to
avoid using a machine without authorization and no password."

so it is security concerns that add this restriction.

There would be two issues here, firstly the security issue of giving anyone
access to the machine. Having an option to allow the guest session to
be started directly from GDM would seem to be ok here, as the admin would
have to enable it. If they do then it would presumably be for one of the
shared machine situations described above, and so it would be what the admin
wanted.

The second issue is the technical one of whether the current guest session
architecture allows the guest session to be launched without a logged in
user. This I know less about. I believe it may be easier with the new GDM
though, which will possibly be in 9.04.

I don't think that this will be likely to be considered for Intrepid, but I still think
it is a legitimate wish, and so I have confirmed the bug and marked it wishlist.
Whether the bug should be fixed for Intrepid will be reviewed by someone more
appropriate than myself.

Thanks,

James