Fast User Switching

[todbanner]

I've just replaced the windows 7 pc in our family room with a RPi.

All the family members had their own log in to the windows 7 machine which kept their profiles, documents, etc. We all know how multi-users on a system work.

When I needed to move the windows 7 machine elsewhere I thought the RPi was an obvious replacement as this workstation gets used for facebook / gmail and other web browsing, nothing the RPi can't handle.

I got it all hooked up yesterday and came to find it appears that "fast user switching" isn't built into Raspbian.

I've done some googling around and come up with nothing, I wondered if I was missing something obvious and if the RPi community could help?

What do we think people?

[GTR2Fan]

I'm a relative noob myself, but a quick Google search threw up this...

http://sourcearchive.raspbian.org/main/ ... ch-applet/

...so maybe it's in there somewhere already if we know where to look?

[klricks]

Not sure about fast switching but this will allow different users to log into/out of GUI.

sudo leafpad /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Find this line: (approximately line 78 in file)
autologin-user=pi

Comment out this line by inserting a # like this:
#autologin-user=pi

save and reboot.

[todbanner]

I'm a relative noob myself, but a quick Google search threw up this...

http://sourcearchive.raspbian.org/main/ ... ch-applet/

...so maybe it's in there somewhere already if we know where to look?

Wow... perhaps google had a headache yesterday when I was searching.

That seems like it would be exactly what I need from the description!

I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks!

[todbanner]

Not sure about fast switching but this will allow different users to log into/out of GUI.

sudo leafpad /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Find this line: (approximately line 78 in file)
autologin-user=pi

Comment out this line by inserting a # like this:
#autologin-user=pi

save and reboot.

Great, that might work too if the fast switching app doesn't.

I'm not going to get to playing with this until the evening today. But I will do as a good forum user should and report back

[todbanner]

A couple of updates:

Solution 2: Comment line from /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

My line is already commented. When I select log out on the bottom right power button, I get sent back to the console. I can then run startx to get back to x. It does not offer me a user option.

Solution 1: fast-switch/fast-user-switch-applet-2.24.0

I'm stuck on ./configure. I fought with dependencies for a while the other night. Gave up and have only just come back to it. Currently I'm at:

Code: Select all

checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes
checking for APPLET... configure: error: Package requirements (gtk+-2.0 >= 2.8.0
	     libpanelapplet-2.0 >= 2.0.0
	     libglade-2.0 >= 2.0.0
	     gio-2.0 >= 2.15.3) were not met:

No package 'libpanelapplet-2.0' found
No package 'libglade-2.0' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables APPLET_CFLAGS
and APPLET_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.

I'm going to go away and read about libpanelapplet-2.0 and see if it can be installed into raspbian. It doesn't appear to be available from stock sources.

Am I missing anything completely n00b and obvious?

Cheers.

[klricks]

A couple of updates:

Solution 2: Comment line from /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

My line is already commented. When I select log out on the bottom right power button, I get sent back to the console. I can then run startx to get back to x. It does not offer me a user option.
...
..

Sorry in order for the GUI login to work correctly you must first enable boot to desktop using:
sudo raspi-config

THEN reboot the system
THEN edit the lightdm file.
Must be done in that order.

Note that raspi-config will take out the comment # in lightdm so you have to put the # back after booting into the GUI the first time only.

[Tarcas]

Sorry if you've already done this, but since nobody has mentioned it I thought I should check... You have created the various user accounts, right? If not, the command is "adduser [username]" and it'll walk you through the rest.

On a related note, if there's anything that you want each user to have in their ~/ directory when the account is created (such as files on their desktop, a custom .bashrc, public_html folder, etc) you can put it in /etc/skel/ before creating the users. Everything in that directory will be copied into every subsequently created user's home directory. Extremely handy when creating lots of accounts with similar purposes.