Service interfaces

The user panel and other parts of the desktop currently use the AccountsService D-Bus service for obtaining and manipulating user account information. The AccountsService explicitly only deals with local accounts (ie /etc/passwd and utmp). It offers APIs to

• List 'known' users (explicitly not 'all' users)
• Find a user by name or by uid
• Create, delete or lock user accounts
• Get a users name, language, email, account type, photo
• Set a users name, language, email, account type, photo
• Change a users password
• Mark a user for automatic login
• Notify about any of these changes

The actual APIs can be found here: org.freedesktop.Accounts and org.freedesktop.Accounts.User

For integrating centrally managed user identities, a number of new APIs will be needed or desirable, including

• Query writability of user attributes
• List available domains
• List 'secondary identities' of a user
• Authenticate for a 'secondary identity'
• 'Drop' a 'secondary identity'
• Notify about expiring passwords or tickets
• Obtain a 'token' to encrypt the users keyring