Re: gdm console login

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

George/Har:

> > I am wondering whether gdm supports console login feature, like the
> > one in kdm or HP-UX CDE login manager? What I'm talking about is that
> > you can select 'console login' in login menu and then DM kills X, and
> > lets you login in terminal. When you logout, or if you just do not
> > login, DM runs X again, end so on.
>
> Not that I know of, but I'm no longer the maintainer and don't follow what's
> new with gdm much.  I'm forwarding to the gdm list.

GDM doesn't support this feature, although it is one that is
often requested.  For such a feature to work best, it would be best if
it weren't necessary to kill the GDM daemon.  It would obviously be
better if the daemon could continue to serve XDMCP and other
requests while the user has dropped into console login.

I'm not sure the best way to implement this since whether or not the
console login program is running underneath GDM is distribution
dependant.  It would be farily simple to add a menu choice or button
to GDM that causes the daemon to kill the greeter and Xserver.  Then
the user could login on the console.  However, it isn't so clear how
GDM would know to restart the GUI login program.  Perhaps the user
would need to run a command that would inform GDM to logout the
console login session and restart the GUI.  I'm not sure that there's
a standard interface for managing a console login program like this.
George, if you have any suggestions, that would be useful.

Brian