Re: Customizing gdm

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 03:43:06PM -0400, Inger, Slav (S.B.) wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Could somebody please advise me on whether it's possible to customize the
> gdm greeter to include a custom UI element (dropdown or a menu that behaves
> like system_button) which will contain custom captions and pass the ID of
> the selected choice to the PAM framework (or record it in some other way)
> when the user tries to log in?  I've read Brian Cameron's/George Lebl's
> GdmGreeterThemeManual.txt from cover to cover, but still don't see any way
> to add custom items to the gdm screen.

No, this is not possible (at least not currently).  The pam framework is
really a question and answer kind of thing.  You can set up a pam module that
asks a question, but to have a UI element for it would require hacking the
actual greeter.  I can't see a general way of doing this with PAM currently,
that could be integrated into GDM proper.

The other buttons really don't do anything with PAM itself.  The only thing
interacting with PAM is the entry box.  And currently the PAM standard
only defines a question that asks for a string.

It is possible that you could somehow recognise a question and use some sort
of a UI element for it, and this is how the face browser works in the current
CVS HEAD.

It would be interesting to have some sort of a general framework for adding
extra info widgets to the greeter, perhaps by loadable modules or some such.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans...
                       -- John Lennon