Frank:
GDM was rewritten in the 2.21 timeframe, and several Sun engineers have
been working over the past two years to make it ready for OpenSolaris.
Of course, there is more work to do, but I think that the Sun Desktop
team did a good job of addressing some of the most critical work that
needed to get done. For example, much time over the past two years was
spent making the new GDM work well in MultiSeat environments, such as
Sun Ray.
On 12/25/2009 3:59 AM, Frank Batschulat wrote:
> So we've got a new GDM and a new GDM login screen with build 130, fine.
>
> a single window "do you want to login" is displayed with a single button
> "okay".
>
> of course, I do!
As you notice, the new GDM requires that you press a button before the
PAM conversation is started. This choice makes more sense when GDM's
"Face Browser" feature is enabled. Most other distros ship with the
Face Browser enabled by default. Sun, however, disables it by default.
But this is a known issue and it has been reported upstream.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=591082
> besides that, there is no other option one could select (like session type,
> reboot, halt, not
> even to dream about console login from dtlogin anymore...)
>
> so whats the point ?
As you highlight in a follow-up post, the session/language choices do
appear in combo-boxes in the panel after your username is identified.
This was changed intentionally, and had been a longstanding
enhancement request for GDM. The old GDM just informed you that you
would log in using your "Last" session and language choices. Many
users complained that GDM should let them know what specific language
and session settings will be used. So, the new GDM lets you know,
but it can obviously only display this after GDM knows which user
is going to login.
> is that some imtermediate state during the migration to new GDM/X ? work in
> progress ?
GDM is under very active development over the past several years, so you
will likely continue to notice improvements with each 6 month release.
In that sense, I would say it is a work-in-progress.
> up until 130 I was at least able to replace in /usr/share/gdm/defaults.conf
>
> - Greeter=/usr/lib/gdmgreeter
> ---
> + Greeter=/usr/lib/gdmlogin
>
> which allowed to me at login a windowmanager session during login
The new GDM only supports a single greeter the gdm-simple-greeter. The
gdm-simple-greeter runs with the metacity window manager. So a
considerably more power window manager does run with the new GDM
compared to the old GDM.
> although I never managed
> to get the advertised "shutdown/reboot" menues working although I
> theoretically
> enabled them:
>
> - SystemMenu=false
> ---
> + SystemMenu=true
>
> thats all gone with new GDM apparently, the conf file as well as the binary:
To get the Shutdown/Reboot functionality working, you have to configure
RBAC, as the GDM manual (and the gdm manpage explains:
http://library.gnome.org/admin/gdm/2.20/solaris.html.en#solarisrbac
With the new GDM, there is no need to set the SystemMenu configuration
to enable this feature anymore.
> osoldev.batschul./usr/share/gdm.=> ls -la /usr/lib/gdmgreeter
> /usr/lib/gdmgreeter: No such file or directory
> osoldev.batschul./usr/share/gdm.=> ls -la /usr/lib/gdmlogin
> /usr/lib/gdmlogin: No such file or directory
> osoldev.batschul./usr/share/gdm.=> ls -la /usr/lib/gdm*
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 9432 Dec 25 09:57
> /usr/lib/gdm-crash-logger
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 64888 Dec 25 09:57
> /usr/lib/gdm-host-chooser
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 133876 Dec 25 09:57
> /usr/lib/gdm-session-worker
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 79528 Dec 25 09:57
> /usr/lib/gdm-simple-chooser
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 383668 Dec 25 09:57
> /usr/lib/gdm-simple-greeter
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 245248 Dec 25 09:57
> /usr/lib/gdm-simple-slave
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 108820 Dec 25 09:57
> /usr/lib/gdm-user-switch-applet
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 139076 Dec 25 09:57
> /usr/lib/gdm-xdmcp-chooser-slave
>
> now, GDM appears to store the session type in ~/.dmrc
>
> osoldev.batschul./export/home/batschul.=> cat .dmrc
> [Desktop]
> Session=icewm
Both the old and the new GDM support the .dmrc file the same.
> since everything is apparently so much about being linux'ish these days, will
> we ever
> get a login screen like on linux by default that enables session type
> selection as well
> as shutdown/restart selection. a bonus would be console-login of course ?
Sun does ship GDM with different configuration than Linux distributions
typically do. Sun chooses to turn off the face browser and requires
some RBAC configuration to enable the shutdown/reboot selection. But
aside from some configuration changes, OpenSolaris does deliver the same
upstream code that GNU/Linux distros ship.
> using gconf-editor(1) or gconftool-2(1) for this is as worse as editing the
> windows
> registry so I'd rather abstain from such "powertools"...
At the moment, you do need to use gconftool-2 to configure GDM, but
there is work in progress to add back a GUI configuration tool for
non-powerusers. This is being worked on. Refer here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587750
Brian
