CDE sessions problem

[Pepe Jimenez Muñoz]

I have a problem with the sessions CDE of my users. I have only a home directory for all users. All user acounts point at this directory.I need that the users can start GUI sessions CDE. When a user try start a session the server show the next message:

A session cannot be started because of the following error:
The authentication file ~/.ICEauthority could not be created.
If the files ~/.ICEautority-c and ~/.ICEauthority/l exist,
they must be removed before your session can be started.


If remove the files .ICEauthority and .Xauthority and try start a new sesion with a user, show the next message and close the session automatically.

The desktop messaging system could not be started
1. Choose OK to return to the login screen.

I have tried disable this authentication method setting in the file Xconfig the variable

Dtlogin*authorize: False

but the problem persist.

some idea?
Thank you.

[Mark Grant]

Make sure that all your users have permission to write to this home directoy and that umask is set so that any files that they write can be modified by other users.

I am not sure this is a prticularly good idea. It would probably be better to give each user there own home directory and use symbolic links to a single file for those config files that they all need to share.

[Rick Beldin]

This is a terrible idea. CDE is not designed to have multiple users logged into the same home directory at the same time.

I fully expect that you will have problems with synchronization, user's saving sessions, and other unspecified problems. While you may be able to make that work, I would consider this to be an unsupported CDE environment.

I would suggest that you reconsider and give all users a unique home directory and uid. Set up a cron job to clean it up afterwards if the issue is that you do not want them to save files, but sharing a home directoy with CDE is almost certain to create problems.