Re: [gdm-list] Separate username and password fields

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Mike:

> I've never liked that GDM only shows one field. I have on occasion
> started to type my username in only to then notice it's coming up in
> dots because the prompt to the side actually reads Password, but my
> research indicates that there is no way to configure to GDM to display
> separate fields for username and password. Which is a shame. Given
> that having only one field can evidently cause confusion I'd like to
> ask the developers to consider adding a configuration option to
> display separate username and password fields. I feel that is much
> more user friendly than using a single field.

This usability issue is raised from time-to-time.  Unfortunately, the
standard for handling authentication is PAM, and GDM also uses PAM.
While PAM makes it possible to integrate novel authentication mechanisms
(such as a fingerprint or SmartCard reader), its query/response protocol
does not support asking multiple questions at the same time.

Most distros are configured by default to use a username/password
configuration, but PAM can be configured to request different, less
or more information.

Aside from solutions like enhancing PAM to support requesting multiple
inputs, limiting GDM so that it only works with certain PAM modules,
or making GDM not use PAM, I cannot think of an easy way to improve
this.

Brian