Re: [gdm-list] a few gdm changes

[Mike Oliver <Mike Oliver Sun COM>]

Ray Strode wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > I really appreciate you helping with this.  Did you also add Failsafe
> > login support.
> No, I haven't done anything with failsafe.  Mostly I took code that
> was there already and turned it on.
>
> Is failsafe really interesting?  I mean the type of user that can use
> a failsafe xterm, could just as easily use the text console for the
> same effect right?

GDM greeters don't only run on machine consoles, and even when they
are on-console not all consoles provide virtual console switching.  A
failsafe session can be helpful for people coming in from remote X
servers (especially in situations where there's zero chance of being
able to lay your hands on the machine where GDM is running) or working
on systems that don't have VT/VC capability.

> For a lot of users, though, a failsafe session
> wouldn't be useful at all, and a lone terminal is a pretty confusing
> failsafe anyway.

And for a more sophisticated user, or an unsophisticated user working
under the direction of a support person on the phone, a failsafe
session might be extremely useful.

I'm probably an outlier but I use a failsafe session at least a couple
of times a week, generally when I want to do something quick on a lab
machine and I want maybe a terminal window and one other app without
the overhead of starting up and shutting down a complete desktop.

> Even if we do have failsafe, does it make sense to treat it different
> than other sessions?  Maybe we should just ship a desktop file that we
> install in /usr/share/xsessions ?  If users of different desktop
> environments expect different terminals, then maybe it should be up to
> the individual desktop environments to provides the failsafe sessions?

That's OK up to a point, and certainly much better than nothing.  It
might save your bacon if something (bad update, unnoticed admin typo,
rampaging cron job, Gnome version-skew mayhem in an NFS-mounted home
directory, ...) has made it impossible to start your normal desktop
but has left GDM's session-startup infrastructure intact.  A real
failsafe would have minimal dependency on GDM's session-startup
stuff so that it could work in spite of damage to those programs
and scripts.

Obviously there are limits to what even a real failsafe can tolerate.
GDM itself could be damaged to the point where it can't give you even
a minimal failsafe.

> > > [...]

> > Buttons are also nice and a little easier to use than menus, perhaps a
> > configurable Toolbar where the user can pick which buttons are available
> > in the toolbar?
> I'm not this should be configurable.  What does the user gain?  One
> thing I'd like to avoid is the giant matrix of settings that the
> current gdmsetup has.

Agreed.  And if there really is a need for customisation at all in this
area then it seems like this is something that could be handled by
theming, not by more controls in 'gdmsetup'.

Mike.
--
mike oliver sun com