Re: [gdm-list] a few gdm changes

["Ray Strode" <halfline gmail com>]

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.
Ah that's true.

> 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.
Okay, so frequently when you use failsafe, you don't use it to recover
a broken system, but instead use it to initiate a quick, one-off
custom Xsession?

Maybe for that case we should just offer an "Other..." option in the
list of sessions that asks for the command to run?

> 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.
In situations where virtual consoles aren't available, I agree.

> > 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.
which scripts? Xsession ?

--Ray