[Bugs] #2458 UNSP: cannot connect to the owning users CORBA ORB (for gconf)

[Sugar Labs Bugs]

#2458: cannot connect to the owning users CORBA ORB (for gconf)
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    Reporter:  sascha_silbe               |          Owner:  silbe                      
        Type:  defect                     |         Status:  new                        
    Priority:  Unspecified by Maintainer  |      Milestone:  Unspecified by Release Team
   Component:  Rainbow                    |        Version:  Git as of bugdate          
    Severity:  Major                      |       Keywords:                             
Status_field:  New                        |   Distribution:  Unspecified                
   Seeta_dev:                             |  
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 Sugar activities need access to GConf, e.g. for the default font size
 ({{{/desktop/sugar/font/default_size}}}) that's queried right on startup.

 GConf still uses an ORB (CORBA). Connections happen through a unix socket
 in {{{/tmp/orbit-<username>/linc-<some random string>}. A client needs
 {{{rw}}} permissions, but by default only the user itself has these.
 {{{umask 002}}} in {{{~/.xsession}}} had no effect. Because a new socket
 is created for each session and gconfd is auto-activated by dbus, we
 cannot change the permissions in {{{~/.xsession}}}.

 GConf is going to get replaced by [http://live.gnome.org/dconf dconf], but
 it doesn't seem like that's significantly less trouble for us:

 {{{
 Typically, reading a key from dconf involves zero system calls and zero
 context switches. This is achieved with a simple file format that doubles
 both as the storage format for data in dconf and as an IPC mechanism
 between the clients and the server.
 }}}

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Ticket URL: <http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2458>
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