[ILUG] Shutdown

[Ger Hooton]

Thanks to all for your help.
Just to put this in  perspective, I have a machine in an open lab that
some users use remotely via ssh [but only from the LAN]. From time to
time users in the lab shut it down. I don't thinks this is malicious,
just some users would be in the habit of shutting when they finished
with the system. So I was thinking that if there was something I could
do just to make things less easy to shutdown then I should. Bottom line,
I will just pin a note in the labs asking users not to shutdown.

//Ger


-- 
Gerard Hooton.
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
University College Cork.
College Road.
Cork.

Tel: +353 21 4902296


-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Lyda <kevin at ie.suberic.net>
To: g.hooton at ucc.ie
Cc: Irish Linux Users Group <ilug at linux.ie>
Subject: Re: [ILUG] Shutdown
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:36:52 +0000

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:21, Ger Hooton <g.hooton at ucc.ie> wrote:
> Thanks Kevin,
> From the GNOME desktop a non privileged user can shutdown the system.
> Is there some way to make disable that for non privileged users?

If they are physically at the machine there is nothing you can do.

As Kenn and other said, there are pam configurations that allow
non-root users logged into consoles (including local X sessions) to
shut down the machine, access floppy drives and other physical aspects
of the machine.  But in my mind that just reflects reality - if you
have physical access to the machine you can do literally anything you
want.  All bets are off.

If you would like to modify your pam configs (/etc/pam.d) and disable
the modules that allow that, feel free.  But all it will do is prevent
a few mistakes (which the users will them painfully repeat elsewhere)
and stop legitimate users from doing things they need to do.

Kevin