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SidecarForLinuxGUI

Sidecar for Linux GUI....

Although the status of sidecar and kerberos at Dartmouth remains unclear (we may be switching to a PKI solution), it would be nice to have a GUI available.

Some of us live on the command line, but (for the rest of y'all) I'll try to get a quick GUI working sometime soon.

Here's the basic plan:

• Use java or Gtk+ to create a simple program with a login screen.
  • Either put the "orangy" ticket-window in the dock, or make it remain free (but set by default to be 'sticky' so that you can see it on any desktop).
• The sidecar process needs to be running in order for a remote machine to request a user's credentials.
  • But the sidecar process needs to run as root, so
  • we need to provide a method for users to restart the sidecard process (but to prevent possible abuse, perhaps limit the restart to once every minute).
• When the user logs in using the GUI, or when the sidecar client-program is started, the program checks to see if a file '/tmp/tktXXXXX' exists (where XXXXX is the UID of the user).
  • If the file exists, the token will appear (or turn orange or whatever...)
  • How do we update the status of the visual token? -- we shouldn't constantly poll the OS to see if the file exists. Perhaps there is another way....

Source Code

Alex (thanks!) whipped us up a basic Gtk thingie. I have yet to play with it:

• RoughSidecarGtk2GUI

RobinsonTryon - 25 Jan 2003