Multi-user gnucash

[ghaverla@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Bill Gribble wrote:
> 
> > It doesn't have such aspirations, at least not with a text file save
> > protocol.  Gnucash is not designed to be used concurrently by multiple
> > users, which is why the data file is locked when in use.
> 
>   Let me rephrase the problem, since I did not express it clearly enough. We
> are using gnucash one user at a time. Single user mode. But, if it is run
> from the networked host it does not clear the lock and link files when the
> user exits the program.
> 
>   When gnucash is run from the host on which it is installed, the LCK and
> LNK files are not left on the disk.
> 
>   We have no need to run two users concurrently. Gnucash is used for
> personal checking and savings accounts, not for our business. The problem is
> not the number of concurrent users, but the problem of running it on a host
> other than that on which it was installed.

I think an (ASCII) picture is in need here.  This doesn't sound like
you are running GnuCash over an X11 session (where the display of
the session is on the host where the user is, and the CPU executing
the code sees the data files as local (although they might be NFS
mounted)).  It also doesn't sound like you are running GnuCash
"locally" with the data NFS mounted from somewhere in your LAN
(so the data appears to be local).  The only thing I can think of,
is that the ~/.gnucash directory (or is that ~/gnucash ?)is being NFS
mounted, but the other files under ~/.gnome are not.  This
I agree can't be split.  Since GnuCash is designed for single
user (at a time) access, if exporting of filesystems is being done 
to share files, it has to be at the level of ~/, not the gnucash
subdirectory.

You'll have to make a "user" called "our_savings" (or similar).
You can either have multiple people login (or su) to that
user (here I have a zillion people all logging in as the GRASS
user) and hence they are all running as a single user (with
multiple personalities), or you can wrap the program being
executed with a script (or C program) which changes the
operating group and does nice things like change the PATH,
HOME, ... environment variables, changes the working directory
to the root of the GnuCash account in question and then runs
GnuCash.

Just my $0.02 (CDN).

Gord

Matter Realisations     http://www.materialisations.com/
Gordon Haverland, B.Sc. M.Eng. President
101  9504 182 St. NW    Edmonton, AB, CA  T5T 3A7
780/481-8019            ghaverla @ freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
780/993-1274 (cell)


P.S.:  WOuld Bill Grimble, and possibly a few other people,
please fix their mailer so that replies to
 gnucash-user@gnumatic.com
are NOT made.  At least from here, it has to be
 gnucash-user@lists.gnumatic.com

I'm getting a little tired of getting stuff bounced like this
header.

Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 06:35:44 -0700 (MST)
From: ghaverla@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
To: Rich Shepard <rshepard@appl-ecosys.com>
Cc: Bill Gribble <grib@gnumatic.com>, gnucash-user@gnumatic.com
Subject: Re: Multi-user gnucash