​​GNOME Private Session
​​Please read the links for any info.
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​​How did you hear about this internship? Someone added the information to the list https://github.com/tapasweni-pathak/SOC-Programs, I was looking for something to implement a project in coming months like https://wiki.gnome.org/Internships/2018/Projects/PrivateSession and working with mentors in an internship with would be best.

​​== Project Information ==

​​What project are you interested in? Private Session
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​​Who is a possible mentor for the project you are interested in? Benjamin Berg, Christian Kellner
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​​Please describe your experience with the GNOME community and GNOME projects as a user and as a contributor. Some experience with GNOME stack and some contributions to GNOME are required for considering the application. Include information and links to the contributions you made:  I have been using GNOME desktop and software since years. I started using linux based distro when I was in university in 2010. Since than my primary machine runs on linux have GNOME desktop. Some contributions can be found and will be updated here.
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​​Please describe your experience with the project you are interested to participate as a user and as a contributor and relevant areas. Include information and links to the contributions you made:
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​​Many parts of project needs thinking about steps and task list, so no mini projects or starter tasks could be prepared which can be patched during application period.

​​Background: Allow users to log into an ephemeral session

  • ​​gnome-session: contains the GNOME session manager and configuration program.
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​​Tasks: 

  1. ​​Create a new session type which can theoretically run in parallel with another session without corrupting anything in $HOME.
  • ​​Make $HOME point to overlayfs with modified storage living on tempfs
  • ​​Probable files to be edited
  • ​​ ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs​
  • ​​Probable Changes
  • ​​create namespace[0]
  • ​​create lower, upper, overlayfs in tempfs
  • ​​allocate temp block device storage for lower and upper fs something like d if=/dev/zero of=lower-fs.img bs=some_value count=obvious_higher_value
  • ​​allot ext4
  • ​​mount fs create and chown(create files)
  • ​​mount $home as readonly
  • ​​create workdirs in upperfs or lowerfs(may be try with making lower or upper fs as readonly)
  • ​​create overlayfs mount something like
  • ​​                sudo mount -t overlay -o \​
  • ​​          lowerdir=/tmp/lower,\​
  • ​​          upperdir=/tmp/upper/upper,\​
  • ​​          workdir=/tmp/upper/workdir \​
  • ​​          none /tmp/overlay​
  • ​​try nesting or combining overlays(possible in 4.0 kernel versions)
  • ​​   
  1. ​​Modifying gnome-shell (both lock screen and GDM part)
  • ​​Switch user enablement
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