Copyright © 2004 Benedikt Meurer
Table of Contents
xfce4-session is a session manager for Xfce 4. Its task is to save the state of your desktop (opened applications and their location) and restore it during a next startup. You can create several different sessions and choose one of them on startup.
xfce4-session provides session management for both X11R6 and legacy X11R5 protocols. If you don't need legacy session management support, you can disable it at compile time, giving --disable-legacy-sm to ./configure. Do NOT EVER run smproxy in session that is managed by xfce4-session, or weird things will happen. The included legacy session management does everything that smproxy would do, and besides that, it also support multiscreen display.
- Display chooser on login
If set, the session manager will ask you to choose a session every time you log in to Xfce.
- Automatically save session on logout
This option instructs the session manager to save the current session automatically when you log out. If you don't select this option you'll be prompted whether you want to save the current session on each logout.
- Prompt on logout
This option disables the logout confirmation dialog. Whether the session will be saved or not depends on whether you enabled the automatic saving of sessions on logout or not.
- Launch KDE services on startup
Enable this option if you plan to run KDE applications as part of your Xfce Desktop session. This will notably increase the startup time, but on the other hand, KDE applications will startup faster. Some KDE applications may not work at all if you don't enable this option.
- Manage remote applications
Allow the session manager to manage applications running on remote hosts. Since this option may constitute a security risk, by listening to a TCP port on your system, do not enable it unless you know what you are doing.
You can customize the splash-screen that xfce4-session will use when you log in Xfce 4. There is a dedicated dialog available from the Xfce 4 Settings Manager.
On the left, the dialog shows a list of all installed themes. Select a theme, and you will see, if available, a preview and informations about it. You can click on the "Test" button to see a demonstration of the selected splash screen.
xfce4-session provides three Splash themes engines. Their respective configuration options are available from the "Configure" button.
xfce4-session supports sudo-based shutdown. Other method can be added by packagers if desired, just by replacing XfsmShutdownHelper with their code. To be able to shutdown the computer, you must be listed in the systems sudoers file, in particular, you must be allowed to execute $libexecdir/xfsm-shutdown-helper as user root (where $libexecdir is the libexec subdir in the prefix you installed xfce4-session, for example /usr/local/libexec).
xfce4-session supports the KIOSK mode. It provides the following KIOSK capabilities:
- CustomizeSplash
whether or not the user is allowed to customize the splash screen.
- CustomizeChooser
whether or not the user is allowed to customize the session chooser settings
- CustomizeLogout
whether or not the user is allowed to customize the logout settings
- CustomizeCompatibility
whether or not the user is allowed to customize the compatibility settings (KDE/Gnome compat)
- CustomizeSecurity
whether or not the user is allowed to customize the security settings. This is one of the most IMPORTANT settings, since it prevents users (actually libICE) from binding to a TCP port.
- Shutdown
whether or not the user is allowed to shutdown (reboot or poweroff) the system. If a user lacks this capability the reboot and poweroff options in the shutdown dialog will be greyed out.
A sample kioskrc is available in the README.Kiosk file provided with the xfce4-session source code.
This allows all users to change their splash, chooser and logout settings, but allows only users in the group wheel to customize the the compatibility settings and shutdown the system. No one will be allowed to adjust the security settings.
xfce4-session was written by Benedikt Meurer (<benedikt.meurer@unix-ag.uni-siegen.de>). To find more information, please visit the Xfce web site.
To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this application or this manual, send an email to the xfce4-dev mailing list — this is the preferred method — or use the bug tracking system at the http://bugs.xfce.org/. If you have questions about the use or installation of this package, please ask on the xfce mailing list.
This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.