[gdm-list] custom display on gdmgreeter

[Ishaaq Chandy <ishaaq gmail com>]

Hi all,

My wife uses an external USB hard-disk to maintain her photo gallery. She needed a simple way to backup this disk. I've setup one of my linux installs' udev configuration to detect when this particular disk gets connected to its USB port and then kicks off my custom script which mounts the drive, rsyncs her photo gallery to a backup disk and then unmounts the drive when done.

This works beautifully, no hassles. The problem is, there is no feedback that this is happening, nor is there any indication when it is completed and the hard disk can be safely removed. I was wondering if there is some way I can hack into the gdm greeter for it to show up an icon (and possibly a progress bar - but that may be ambitious) when the disk is being rsynced.

My wife isn't very computer savvy, which is why I want to make this very simple from her point of view. I on the other hand am not afraid to write some C/C++ to get this working. As long as someone can give me some pointers as to where to start.

... or tell me I'm barking up the wrong tree and that GDM can't do this.

Thanks,
Ishaaq