[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: A case for sharing Desktop and home directories
From:       Uno Engborg <uno () webworks ! se>
Date:       2002-12-04 2:05:15
[Download RAW message or body]

On Wednesday 04 December 2002 00:44, Manuel Amador wrote:
> El mar, 03-12-2002 a las 17:42, Uno Engborg escribió:
> > On Tuesday 03 December 2002 23:30, Manuel Amador wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I'm cross-posting to what should have been the right forum to discuss
> > > this issue.
> >
> > Really, What forums would that be?
>
> This is the right one.  kde-devel sure wasn't.  kde-devel was very
> hostile to the idea.
>
> > It seams that you have solved most of the problems, though
>
> thanks =)
>
> > But you still have the problem with automounted home directories that may
> > have to live in different user environments. My guess is that most
> > distros will create a /etc/skel/Desktop for that reason. And that sort of
> > take the edge out of your idea.
>
> Please explain more =)


In business environments home directories normally do not reside on the 
machine in front of the user but rather on some server with fast and secure 
RAID devices and backup units. The home directories are then exported using 
NFS to the workstations, who mount them using automount.


The user workstations could be of various kinds  E.g on one end of the office 
you may have a Pentium box and on the other end of the office you may have a 
PowerPC machine and in a third place you may have a SGI box running Irix. But 
all machines may use the same home directories. This means that a user that 
have binaries or libs of his own will have three versions of them, one for 
PowerPC and one for Pentium, and one for MIPS or whatever CGI uses nowdays.  
And his login scripts will have to set the PATH and LD_LiBRARY_PATH 
differently depending on what machine he is currently using. 


So far there is no problems for your idea, more than it shows that some 
cluttering somewhere may be necessary under certain circumstances. It also 
shows that you may have some parts of your files is totally irrellevant at 
any given time, but still needed for the system to work properly. Such files
are best left as unvisible as possible.


There is also no guarrantee that both machines run KDE, e.g the Pentium may 
run KDE but the PowerPC may only run Gnome and if you are unlucky the SGI 
machine only have the standard Irix GUI that maybe calls what you calls 
Desktop for Workbench instead. But that is simple to fix you just create a
symbolic link from Desktop to Workbench in your $HOME directory. Now
you have a problem. And I haven't even started on the automount part yet.
 So you have to suggest the same fix to both Gnome people and the Irix people 
at SGI.  This really needs to be standardiized outside of KDE.

Now, on to the automount problems. Automount is used to save system and 
network resources.  automomunting is at least in Linux and Solaris configured
in the file /etc/auto.master. in that file a couple of virtual direcories are 
created. E.g. /home, /samba,...
An entry in /etc/auto.master could look something like this.

/etc/auto.samba --timeout 60
/etc/auto.home --timeout 60

where the file /etc/auto.home contains mount instructions for home directories
and they usually look something like this:

username            -fstype=nfs     fileservr:/somdir/usernamehomedir

and you do cd ~username/ on your machine the $HOME dir of user
username will be automagically mounted from the fileserver.
That doesn't give you much room for a /home/username/Desktop
as $HOME directory. 

And setups with automounted home directories is standard procedure for
the corporate Unix desktop. Even thoug I really hope tha no poor soal really 
have three different architectures in their company that need to share home 
dierectories. Anyhow,  Linux distributers are not likely make changes that 
breaks this as it is the people that actually use this kind of stuff that are 
the ones most likely to pay for support or even boxed CDs.


>
> > Filx it by redifining the cd command and the starting point of konsole
> > instead, and you will get what you want.
>
> Please explain more.  What is Filx?  Does it mean "fix"?  Do you mean/samba 

Sorry for the typo. i meant Fix.

I mean that you could replace cd with a program or a shell script that makes, 
you end up in /home/username/Desktop when you type cd and are logged in as
user username. in some shells you may even do it as aliases.


> change working directory for Konsole and redefining the CD command?  Why
> not fix the real issue instead of working around it?
>
> My goal is to have, as it is well stated, KDE use the user's homedir as
> dfault desktop directory.

The real issue is that you want the user to end up on the Desktop regardless 
if he logs in from a shell or uses the GUI environment.
Fixing it the way you suggest breaks things. Fixing it with changes to cd and 
login scripts don't 


>
> > The only side effect is that folders like Mail will not be visible, but
> > on the other hand these files should only be visible through the mail
> > client and should never be viewed or edited directly. So the side effect
> > is on the plus side.
>
> Well, the idea is that in a distant future you will be able to enter
> your Mail folder and double click on a message (envision Maildir format
> mailboxes).


This is not a very good idea. To get deacent functionality you would end up 
having K-mail as a kpart in konqueror, and in that case it really doesn't 
matter where the files are physically.  But if you must you could symlink the 
Mail directory to the Destkop folder.


Regards
Uno Engborg
_______________________________________________
kde-usability mailing list
kde-usability@mail.kde.org
http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]