[Pkg-ltsp-devel] Bug#701916: Kill local user processes on logout

[Alkis Georgopoulos]

Package: ltsp-client-core
Version: 5.4.2-5
Severity: grave
Tags: patch upstream


LTSP fat clients and also thin clients that use localapps, mount
/home/username with SSHFS and unmount it on logout.

Unfortunately at the point where the unmount happens, local processes
are still running, and when Xorg killed them later on, they end up
writing their data to the local tmpfs filesystem because the SSHFS mount
is no longer there.
That's one reason for data loss (hence the grave severity), but there's
another, worse one:

On the next login of the same user, /home/username/<data of the
processes I mentioned above> exist locally on the tmpfs, so the LTSP
code thinks that the sysadmin has taken care to mount the user home dirs
via other means (e.g. NFS), so the SSHFS mount is no longer needed.
Thus, all user sessions after the first one, use a local tmpfs
/home/username. Users don't see their existing documents or settings,
and any new document they write, will be saved in the local tmpfs and
lost on client reboot.

Here's the upstream bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ltsp/+bug/1093144

And the patch:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ltsp-upstream/ltsp/ltsp-trunk/revision/2462

Only one file needs to be patched,
client/localapps/ldm-rc.d/X99-zlocalapps-cleanup.