Integrate VMware and Gnome - continued

[Regis Duchesne <hpreg vmware com>]

Hi guys,

This discussion started in gnome-list 2 days ago (the beginning is
here:
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1999-October/0432.shtml), and following the wise advices of some people, I'm moving it here.

Basically, I'm in charge of making sure that VMware will install on
Linux as well as on Windows, including desktop icons and start menu
entries.

Before everybody begin to yell at me ("we don't want that icon crap
!"), I need to explain how I want it to work:

- I would like the sysadmin to run the VMware install program
- I would like to give Gnome users the _choice_ (i.e. prompt them) to
  have VMware desktop icons and startup menu entries.

I have figured out most of the stuff, and I'm going to write a
document about it that I will post here, so that other people from
other companies will also be able to integrate to make sure that their 
product is well integrated with Gnome.

Basically, my main problem is: I need to start a program (written by
VMware) the first a user opens a Gnome session after VMware has been
installed by a sysadmin.

I short, what I would like is: the sysadmin runs the VMware
installation program. This program installs a system-wide hook
(another program).

Then, each time a user opens a Gnome session, the hook is called. The
hook then executes, and typically displays a nice Window promting the
user if he wants the Vmware icons and startup menu entries. And the
hooks writes a "job done" flag in ~/.vmware/foo for example. Then, the
user is never prompted again (i.e. at the next Gnome session of the
user, the hook is called but it sees that the "job done" flag is here
and it exits)

The question is: does this hook exist?

A partial answer is yes: it exist on a per-user basis: I can modify
the ~/.gnome/session of a user to make sure that at next logon, a
program will be started. But this is not satisfaying, because it means 
that I have to scan /etc/passwd typically, and patch all user's
session files. I don't want to do that because it is just silly.

So do we have a system-wide hook that the installation program could
setup? Do you think of anything that is executed when the user opens a 
session, and that can be modified (a parameter in a config file or
something)?

If this hook doesn't exist, I think it would be useful to provide such 
a generic mechanism, sort of a system-wide session management :)

Thanks for your attention,
-- 
Regis "HPReg" Duchesne - Member of Technical Staff - VMWare, Inc.
        www              http://www.VMware.com/
       (O o)             I use Linux (1135 KB/s over 10Mb/s ethernet)
--.oOO--(_)--OOo.----------------------------------------------------
If cryptography is outlawed, only outlaws will have cryptography