ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.2.4.2, the "Horny Squirrel" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOP

What does "Horny Squirrel" have with the focus of this release?  Absolutely
nothing!  What does it have to do with GDM?  Absolutely nothing!  Why
did I pick it?  Hell if I knew.

Well I've been very lazy about releases.  This was supposed to be a fairly
minor release, but since I didn't release it some more substantial changes
racked up.  This release should fix issues with Xnest launching, and
it should fix a whole bunch of PAM issues and there are a whole bunch of
other fixes.  Also this release does a bit more of the "embrace and extend"
of the XDMCP protocol :).  Still 100% compatible, but now the MANAGED_FORWARD
will work nicely even in busy networks.

Everyone is encouraged to upgrade if they are running any of 2.2.4.0 or
2.2.4.1.  There is a possible security hole with Xnest launching.  It is
possible to look at old (not ones in use) cookies of any user.  Of course
cookies should be (and are) rebaked on each login, so it's not a security
hole, but not something that should be possible anyway.  In this version
this has been fixed.

And now for the standard part of the release announcement:

Ahh, so you have no clue what gdm is?  Well if you've read this far ... let's
not get into that.  Gdm is GNOME Display Manager, the little daemon that lets
you log in to your computer.  It allows xdmcp multiple login displays,
selection of languages, multiple login sessions and generally is much cooler
then any xdm clone out there, mostly cuz it isn't an xdm clone to begin with.
I mean heck, it's even got a graphical configurator, so you don't have to use
the command line to hose your system anymore.

News:
=====

Highlights of 2.2.4.2:

- Keep a global pam handle around again, and add a pam conversation
  dialog when no greeter is up.  Set RHOST and RUSER and fix some
  other pam related things.  Hopefully we're more pam correct now.

- Have an option that forces 24hour clock even in locales which
  like 12hour clock (Terje Rosten, Ali Akcaagac, me)

- Change how FLEXI_XNEST works, be more paranoid in who we allow to
  run an an xnest, and we always run as the user who requested it.
  It requires that the user has a .Xauthority file with an
  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 for the current display.

- Fix many obscure fork races

- Now exports a procol version environmental variable to the greeter
  so that it's easier to use external greeters.

- Ensure that /tmp/.ICE-unix exists

- X servers now run with root gid and not gdm gid

- Ugly fix to the toolbar deadlock problem, very VERY evil, but
  it's really a bug in gnome-dock

- When we run a flexi console server, lock the screen with xscreensaver.
  Also throttle xscreensaver so that it doesn't take extra CPU power.

- Yet another extension to XDMCP, which makes the MANAGED_FORWARD
  stuff more reliable on bad networks.  It is however 100% compatible
  with 2.2.4.1 in operation.

- Minor fixes all over the place

- Documentation updates (Trevor Curtis)

- Translations updated (Zbigniew Chyla, Kjartan Maraas, Ole Laursen,
  Stanislav Visnovsky, Yukihiro Nakai, Roy-Magne Mo, Carlos Perelló Marín,
  Pablo Saratxaga, Christian Rose, Christophe Merlet, Christopher R. Gabriel)


Note:  Gdm2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp mkp net>, and
is now maintained by the Queen of England.  Although when she's not answering
her email, me or Lee Mellabone usually cover for her.

Note2:  If installing from the tarball do note that make install overwrites
most of the setup files, all except gdm.conf and gnomerc.  It will however
save backups with the .orig extention first.

Note3:  Distributors, packagers.  Please, PLEASE use the standard Gnome
script when setting things up as gnome, or at least equivalently working
scripts.  It should never be OK to just exec gnome-session, that is
considered bad form.  The script needs to read (if available) the ~/.gnomerc
and otherwise read the <sysconfdir>/gdm/gnomerc file.  This allows users and
administrators to setup custom startup for gnome.  Another thing is that if
your distro doesn't have gnome-core 1.4.0.3 or later you should probably
disable the Gnome Chooser stuff until that happens (you should update
gnome-core anyway).  Third thing is make sure to set up the X servers to run
on the correct virtual terminals if you start the gdm process before the
other login thingies.  See the end of the gdm.conf sample file.

Downloading:
============

ftp://ftp.5z.com/pub/gdm/
http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/stable/sources/gdm/
http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/stable/redhat/i386/gdm/
http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/stable/redhat/SRPMS/gdm/

(Note: I've also made an Alpha/Linux rpm, which is available at the 5z site)

Have fun,

George

PS:  BREAK OUT THE CHAMPAGNE!  GDM TARBALL HAS BROKEN TWO MEGS!  Think about
this.  It is scary, I mean, all it does is log you in :)  Well this is a
dubious achievement, and I can't take all the credit, I think most of the
increase is from translations rather then code increase.  Still as the
maintainer dude I can take credit.  I wonder if this will work as a pickup
line: "Hey baby, the gdm tarball reached two megs.  Wanna come to my place
and compile it?"

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   I thoroughly disapprove of duels.  If a man should challenge
   me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and
   lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
                       -- Mark Twain