Re: [gdm-list] autologin performance ...

["William Jon McCann" <william jon mccann gmail com>]

Hi Michael,

Sorry for the delay.

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 12:09 PM, Michael Meeks
<michael meeks novell com> wrote:
> Hi Jon,
>
>        This is prolly the world's most ignorant question ;-) but - I'm trying
> to accelerate bootup and auto-login by avoiding creating a gnome-session
> as the gdm user, and starting up so much stuff [ it's quite a lot on the
> bootchart ]. Is that something we can do already ?

No, it was on the to-do for quite some time.

>        I fiddled around trying to abuse gdm-welcome-session.c to just log me
> in as me ;-) and other vile hacks in gdm-simple-slave.c (of very mixed
> success - mostly hurt by the fairly complex init sequence getting
> pre-empted).
>
>        Anyhow - so, before I sink yet more time bumbling around in here - I
> wondered: do you have a sketch design for faster auto-login lurking at
> the back of your mind, and/or any recommendations ? I'm happy to attempt
> the typing / testing of course if only to learn some gdm internals.

Yeah, mostly we just don't want to start the greeter and then call
into the code we already have for the timed login stuff.

While it doesn't teach you how to fish, I hope this gives you what you
are looking for:
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gdm?view=revision&revision=6582

This actually does a bit more than just add autologin.  It also tries
to prevent autologin loops.  I err on the conservative side and only
allow autologin once per managed display.

This patch is for trunk but it should also apply to 2.24.  Please let
me know what you think.

>        Also; although, the code structure is seeping slowly into my mind; what
> would have really helped would be some simple / ASCII interaction
> diagrams: who forks whom, and how they talk to each other. I attach a
> somewhat edited, and cut-down set of the debug info that is traced at
> startup, of a normal login session - would you be interested in me
> cleaning up & further annotating that to add to INTERNALS ?

Yeah, sorry.  The interactions are a bit complicated in places.
Besides INTERNALS the only docs we have are the Design Details section
of http://live.gnome.org/GDM/NewDesign.  Would welcome some
enhancements o either of those.

Thanks,
Jon