Re: [gdm-list] Selecting X server layout from GDM login screen

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Torben:

> Thanks for your quick answer, Brian. See below for the rest of my answer.

No problem.

> > How do you build the menu?  I suspect that in order for the menu choices
> > to have mnemonics and human understandable descriptions that it might
> > be necessary to add some stuff to gdm.conf so that such things can be
> > defined for the menu?
>  
> I defined a very simple list box for my greeter theme. Nothing fancy, 
> everything hardcoded.

Really it should be reading the list from the gdm2 code.  When you speak
of "layouts" aren't we really talking about custom Xserver commands?  I
suspect that you are passing the "layout" option on to the Xserver via
command line arguments?

If so, then this is a larger problem that people have requested.  Users
can define different Xserver commands (like [server-Standard],
[server-Terminal]).  There's really no reason that you can not define
your own ([server-foo]) and could pick this in the dropdown list.  This
would mean the menulist could build the choices from the gdm.conf file.

I think this is a slightly different way of doing what you are wanting,
but it would probably be more generally useful.  This way sysadmins
could set up alternative xserver options that they could use if they
want.  For example, I know one person who had 2 Xservers on their
machine (one for development testing) and wanted GDM to be able to
allow him to log into either one.  This might also be useful for turning
on a11y specific Xserver options.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but it seems to make sense to let the
sysadmin configure the menu choices via the gdm.conf file.

> What would you add to gdm.conf? The PostLogin script I have written already 
> includes a check if the selected server layout is actually defined in 
> XF86Config. 

Hmmm, probably not very portable to check just against one Xserver.  That's
why it might be better for the sysadmin to specify the available ones in
the gdm.conf file.

To add an option to gdm.conf, you simply add the key=value pair to the
right section.  You'll notice in gdmlogin.c how GDM handles these config
options.  Search for "GdmHalt" for an example.

> > This is a feature that would be useful to have in CVS head, but any changes
> > to the gdm.conf file would need to be documented in the docs/C/gdm.xml
> > file.
>
> Nice to hear that the maintainer of GDM thinks that this is a useful 
> feature. :-) I'll see what I can do. 

Brian