Nicolas: > On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 06:29:29PM -0500, Brian Cameron wrote: >>> Provided that it is possible for the installer(s) and user add tools to >>> edit the configuration, yes. If not then... no. >> >> If the installer runs as a user which can modify the GDM configuration >> file /etc/gdm/custom.conf with 644 root:sys permissions, then it can. >> I'd think the installer would be able to do this. > > That's fine. What I meant was: can the installer import that interface? > And the answer is almost certainly yes. (For the user add tools there's > also the question of locking around edits of /etc/gdm/custom.conf.)
The configuration file is in standard INI format. The GDM code uses the glib gkeyfile() interfaces to read it and write to it. The INI format is pretty simple so you would not need to use the glib functions to access the file if you did not want to. Though, probably a better way to update configuration options will be introduced when the gdmsetup program is added back to GDM. This work is currently being done by Canonical and will likely make it into GDM in the 2.30 timeframe. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587750 Note that when this is integrated that it will add new D-Bus interfaces for modifying GDM configuration, so that programs like the installer can make D-Bus calls to tell the GDM daemon to tell it to update the configuration file. The GDM daemon can be expected to manage such updates in a safe way so that you do not need to worry about locking the file when making changes. And it would be cool to make D-Bus a dependency of useradd, no? Note that the patches in the above bug use PolicyKit to ensure that only users with authority can edit the GDM configuration. When we port this to Solaris, we will obviously need to make it use RBAC instead. Brian
