Re: [gdm-list] gdmflexiserver questions

["simon.zheng" <Simon Zheng Sun COM>]

Reid Rivenburgh wrote:
> Hi.  I'm currently running Fedora 9-nearly-release (up to date with
> rawhide, gdm.x86_64 1:2.22.0-1.fc9) with an nvidia card (8600 GTS) and
> the nv driver.  I have a few questions about gdm and gdmflexiserver
> that I tried asking on the fedora list, but haven't gotten a response.
>  I figure this is a better place to ask.
>
> I have a desktop machine that one user, me, is always logged in to.
> When I step away from the computer, I like the idea of going back to
> the gdm login screen so other users can login.  I found out about
> gdmflexiserver recently, and that appeared to be nearly perfect.  If I
> understand it correctly, I can run "gdmflexiserver -s" to go back to
> the gdm login screen; other users can login, and I can login as me and
> find myself back at my X display.
>
> Here are the questions, though.
>
> 1. Is the above usage correct?  It should be doing what I want?
>   
You probably don't have to input "-s".

Looking into code, option "-s" actually do nothing in GDM 2.22.
It's a legacy option. In old GDM, this option will directly start
a new login screen without popping up a user chooser, which is a
separate dialog different from login screen. In GDM 2.22.0, login
screen has contained user chooser, "-s" is useless I think.

Also, there're GUI ways to switch user or back to login screen.

- user switcher applet on gnome-panel. You can add this applet
manually and try.

- Old GDM has another 2 ways. User switching button on "Logout"
dialog and "Preferences->New login" on launch menu. However,
these 2 GUI doesn't work with GDM 2.22.

> 2. I noticed my machine was slowly using up memory.  It seems that
> everytime I run "gdmflexiserver -s", I get a whole new X session
> running.  When I log back in as me, it doesn't go away, so they're
> building up over time.  At the moment, I have six metacity processes
> running (and I run fvwm!), which is how I've been monitoring this.
> I've noticed that when I run "gdmflexiserver -s", it almost
> immediately shows the gdm login screen, but then I see a new X server
> starting, and after a few seconds, I again see the gdm login.  I
> thought at first that it was just killing and restarting the X server
> for some reason, but now I suspect it's creating a new one each time.
> Does anyone know why this might be happening?
>   

What you are seeing might be switch Xserver rather than killing
and restarting Xserver.

In fact, login screen is running like a real gnome-session,
called greeter-session. When starting gdmflexiserver, it will
detect whether or not greeter-session exists. If yes, just
switch to there. Otherwise, create a new greeter-session and
then switch.

> 3. Assuming I can get things running properly, I've been a little
> confused about what scripts run when.  I was hoping the
> gdm/Init/Default and related scripts get run every time I run the
> gdmflexiserver command.  It doesn't seem like they do, though.  Is
> that correct?  Basically, after running gdmflexiserver, I want to turn
> off the monitor after sleeping for a short time.  I get the feeling
> that DPMS doesn't work if you simply change VT to a display that
> thinks the monitor is already off (i.e. past the idle time) unless you
> hit a key or move the mouse to reset the idle counter.
>   

You can try with GPM display management. That would be easier
than writing a script. What you need to do is just set from
gnome-power-preferences.

Also, GPM can be even run on login screen. When you stay on
login screen for a long time, monitor will sleep after a
specified idleness time.

> 4. When I try to run a gdmflexiserver command, I get this:
>
> % gdmflexiserver --command VERSION
>
> ** (gdmflexiserver:15043): WARNING **: No longer supported
>
> Is that supposed to happen?
>   

You could try with
$gdmflexiserver --version

-Simon
> Thanks for any help!
>
> Reid
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