restart button on the login screen privileges

[kai]

Hello,

Is there any way to change the privileges of the start button on the login screen so anyone can press it?

EG: I have some laptops used in a classroom environment that unfortunately have to have fast user switching turned on.
The reason for this is incase someone doesn't log out and just closes the lid and puts it away, the next person can login without any bother, however this then leads to one of our managed printer popups getting super confused and spewing errors out everywhere.

What I would like to achieve is making it so that anyone can press the restart button on the login screen or when in their account and it not pop up asking for the admin credentials due to someone else already being logged in.
Based on the fact os x is unix I was hoping there is some group I can add all users to, to allow restart by anyone under any condition

[mm2270 · Accepted solution]

I haven't looked into this, and probably won't but it may be possible to edit the /etc/authorization file to allow for this function. Somehow I don't think there's an existing rule in the authorization file for this though, and to be frank, creating new rules for it is not for the faint of heart. Possible but not easy.

Rather than mess with that just for that one function, what I'd suggest is to make a simple Self Service policy users can run in this situation which will reboot their Mac with root privileges. It might involve using a shutdown -r now or better yet, a shutdown -r +2 command, or something along those lines, just to give them a small window before forced reboot. That can be a one liner script or Run Command in the policy.

They would of course need to do this while logged into their account, not from the login screen.

[Look]

Anything further on this, we have a similar issue with dual boot macs being unable to be rebooted into Windows by a standard user without holding down the power button.
Tried google not much there, tried playing with sudoers but my linux skills simply aren't up to the task!
Machines are 10.9.2 will be 10.9.3 soon.

[sean]

You should be able to run a login item that checks to see how many users are logged in. If more than one, inform user, let them know it will reboot and reboot.

This will ensure there is always only one logged in user even though you have fast user switching.