Re: [gdm-list] a few gdm changes



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


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