Display manager
Basically:
- gdm blows
- xdm sucks
We need a good one which can be launched on 100 machines without crashing.
Comments (11)
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reporter -
KDM again for Paris I 2015, worked well.
Easy customization can be achieved by editing/copying the xml and png of an existing theme. For an example theme, see: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/archlinux-themes-kdm/
I vote for KDM for the 2015 final.
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assigned issue to
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assigned issue to
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Tested LightDM with gtk greeter, not convinced:
- - Had to create a bunch of other tmpfs
- - Could not get it to display PAM errors from
pam_presenced.py
. - + Displays keyboard layout switcher
- + Display session switcher (there was only MATE desktop while kde desktop was also installed...)
- Configuration files used:
# /etc/lightdm.conf [LightDM] minimum-vt=1 user-authority-in-system-dir=true run-directory=/run/lightdm [SeatDefaults] greeter-hide-users=true greeter-show-manual-login=true session-wrapper=/etc/lightdm/Xsession
# /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf [greeter] allow-debugging = true hide-user-image = true
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What's the outcome of this issue? Keeping KDE Display Manager?
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KDM does not support keyboard layout switching, I will look at SDDM and compare to LightDM.
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During the 30/04 check-sm, we tested SDDM, unfortunately it was crashing as soon as it was started. The only way to get it to work was to do the following:
$ systemctl start kdm $ systemctl stop kdm $ systemctl start sddm
SDDM works well on my virtual setup, so it might be an issue with the video driver.
The elarun theme provides the traditional login/password fields, a session selector and a keyboard layout switcher.
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KDM is deprecated and not in the Arch Linux repository anymore. SDDM is the new recommended login manager.
It was used for Paris I 2016 and had keymap selection and login+pasword fields. We did a good looking (ymmv) custom theme painlessly in a less than an hour. The hack to display the error message from pam_presenced did not work and we had to disable it.
Action item: Check that the error box is still broken.
If it is, edit
sadm/python-lib/prologin/presenced/pam_presenced.py
and modifiy thefail()
function so that it displays the error message in a user friendly box under sddm.Ideas:
- Check that the XAUTHORITY retrieval hack is not broken with sddm, iirc that was the problem.
- We should remove this hack and use pam error reporting functions and sddm should be able to display them correctly.
- We use pam_exec(8) to do our hook, and I am not sure there we can report errors with that thing.
- If so, rewrite the PAM using python: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/simplepam
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fc372445a68070f905b82314d4d41a726ec2c909 automates the deployment of a custom Prologin theme with login/password fields, session selector and keyboard layout switcher. Some configuration is still needed to add keyboard layouts.
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- changed title to Display manager
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KDM worked fine this year, but we need to look into customization.