Multi-user gnucash

[linas@linas.org]

It's been rumoured that Rich Shepard said:
> 
>   Two of us access gnucash from different workstations. The data are in a
> directory for which we both have read/write permissions. The software is
> installed on host 'A' and can be accessed from host 'B' via telnet. (We have
> a secure enough work environment that we can comfortably telnet internally.)
> 
>   The problem I'd like to solve is preventing the LCK and LNK files in the
> data directory when gnucash is accessed from host 'B' (the "remote" one). We
> don't get these files when using gnucash from the machine on which it is
> installed (host 'A').


The link and lock files are used to prevent multiple instances of
gnucash from opening the same file at the same time.   Because gnucash
writes out *all* of its data every time you hit 'save', the last user to
hit the 'save' button always 'wins': thier data will over-write all
previous writes.

The lock mechainism operates the same way if the gui is displayed locally 
or remotely; it should not make any difference.

If you want the second user to have 'read-only' access, then you should
say that; currently, though, there is no safe way to have two users
using gnucash at the same time.

(A multi-user version is being developed with an sql backend, but this
is not even beta yet).

Note that link & lock files are left behind if gnucash crashes, or if it
is killed.   The only way to fix this is to complain about crashes, and
never intenitonally kill gnucash.

--linas