Multi-user gnucash

[Rich Shepard]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001 ghaverla@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote:

> I am guessing that the data files are in in the home directory
> of some user (for arguments purposes, rich).  So, you'll have
> files like:

  They're in /home/pers-data/ which is owned by root and the group is users.
Both my wife and I are in the group users so we both have read-write access
to these files.

> Is your wife logging in via telnet as rich, or is she logging
> in as "wife", and is relying on directory/file permissions
> to allow her to read/write the various files in your (/home/rich)
> directory?

  She logs in under her username and the /home/pers-data/ directory has
permissions 775 (except the group "execute" is 's' rather than 'x'). Same
setup for /home/shared-data/ where commonly-accessed business data reside.

> > If its the latter, then I suspect that maybe the window manager isn't
> > ICCCM compliant, and so gnucash doesn't receive the shutdown message...
>
> GnuCash isn't trapping all (enough of) the signals?

  The window manager is xfwm. We run Xfce here as the desktop/task switcher.

> But sometimes, we assume that we only wear two hats, when we probably
> should be wearing more than 2.  In this case, it might actually help
> things a bit if your machine had a pfinance ID, and when either of you had
> "personal" (probably actually finances of you as a couple) finance work to
> do, both of you would log in as pfinance to do this work, and not do it as
> "rich" or "wife".

  Why? Isn't that why users can belong to multiple groups? Groups can permit
certain users to access data in directories that are not accessible to those
users who are not members of that group. As I understand system
administration, that's the function of groups and there's no need to have
multi-user usernames for folks.

> Does this solve the problem of leaving behind LCK/LNK files if the program
> exits "improperly" over a network connection?

  I guess I don't understand why gnucash would exit improperly from a telnet
session.

> If something is killing GnuCash with a signal which isn't being trapped,
> or can't be trapped; these files will be left behind.  If the signal can
> be trapped, then Linas, Bill and the other guys/gals at gnumatic will
> probably write the code to take care of this case.

  I'm going to try the dual binary trick this weekend. I'll report back to
the list on Monday.

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

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