ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.4.2.98 (unstable), the "Documentation!" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONGJMP

(If you have no clue what gdm is, skip a few paragraphs down first)

[For a stable version use version 2.4.1.4]

I actually wrote up some docs for this thing.  Isn't that crazy.  In any case
I've updated the reference docs, added lots of new info and merged in the
greeter theme document.  So the GdmGreeterThemeManual.txt is gone now.
The docs are standard gnome docbook/xml docs and are installed so that you
can browse them through the GNOME help system under GNOME|System.  They are
also now on the web in both html and pdf format at the webpage
(www.jirka.org/gdm.html)

Also of interest is that there are now two uses of setjmp/longjmp in the code
and more are likely coming in the future.  I've finally overcome my
irrational fear of setjmp/longjmp and started using them.  Some of the
problems really weren't possible to solve without them with some weird fork
hack.  So now I can't mention any more that GDM is better then XDM because
it doesn't use longjmp :)

More security kind of things were added in this release, for example we're
now also very careful in the logdir, and the authority files are not readable
by the gdm user after the session has started until the session ends.  Also
the on-disk-fifo is no longer used for slave<->daemon communication meaning
the gdm user can cause less havoc with that as well.

Also lots of speed improvements.  First of all the FIFO change makes things
a bit snappier and there was also an overhaul of how many XOpenDisplay's we
do which turns out took up a lot of time.  The most significant improvment
comes from fixing the server reinitialization which shaves off a few seconds
from server reinit (and avoids some races as well).

There is even a new feature (which passed the release-team and I even
didn't have to whine much) which makes it possible to have custom
selectors on the graphical greeter.  Look for the "listitem" tag in
the theme documentation.

To solve the libart crash issue, I now require a new version of libart with
that fixed (there's one more fix in the same code in CVS but I haven't seen
that affect gdm).

And now for the standard part of the release announcement:

GDM is the GNOME Display Manager, it is the little proggie that runs in the
background, runs your X sessions, presents you with a login box and then
tells you to piss off because you forgot your password.  It does pretty much
everything that you would want to use xdm for, but doesn't involve as much
crack.  It doesn't use any code from xdm, and has a more paranoid and safer
design overall.  It also includes many features over xdm, the biggest one of
which is that it is more user friendly, even if your X setup is failing.  The
goal is that users should never, ever have to use the command line to
customize or troubleshoot gdm.  It of course supports xdmcp, and in fact
extends xdmcp a little bit in places where I thought xdm was lacking (but is
still compatible with xdm's xdmcp).

News:
=====

Highlights of 2.4.2.98:

- DOCUMENTATION!  We have documentation!  I've updated the
  xml docs and they're installed so you can use the GNOME
  help browser to browse them under GNOME|System.  Or you
  can view the HTML versions on the webpage
  (www.jirka.org/gdm.html)

- Whack the GdmGreeterThemeManual.txt as it is now part
  of the xml documentation

- Add mnemonics/keynav to a bunch of things and generally try to
  fix issues from the HIG bugs filed in bugzilla (partially
  fixes #117776, #117784, #117504

- Add "listitem" tag to the graphical themes.  This allows
  custom list widgets in the theme and then you can get
  the info in a PreSession script or whatnot.

- The graphical greeter now scales down fonts on screens
  800x600 and less, and scalles down fonts even more
  on screens 640x480 and less.

- Remove the iconification of Standard greeter feature,
  it was broken and I didn't want to fix it, and it was
  weird anyway.

- Internal messaging is now faster as we use an internal pipe
  instead of the FIFO file.  Also reduces the damage gdm user
  can do

- Don't XOpenDisplay so many times to make things run along
  a lot faster, and use XSetAuthority instead of XAUTHORITY
  env var internaly

- The server reinit is now safer, doesn't fork an extra process
  and it's quite a bit faster

- Justification of text in the graphical greeter is based on
  the anchor of the text

- We're very careful about the log directory as well as the
  ServAuthDir

- Fix a bunch of errors (mostly portability stuff) by looking at the
  FreeBSD cvs repository

- The server authfile is now unreadable by the gdm user during
  a user sessions for security

- Fixed #109331, by catching term/int/hup signals properly when inside
  the hanging gethostbyaddr/name

- The name resolution stuff now caches the last result for 60
  seconds

- Get the name of the root user instead of assuming it's "root"
  (fixes #117527)

- Fix hangs with the signal stuff by fixing the in_signal flag
  undercounts and redoing the waitpid mess in the slave by using
  a select call, and not doing that many things in the signal
  handlers.  Also fixes a long delay when restarting the greeter

- Fix configuration with --with-xinerama=no (#117895)

- The standard greeter clock will now look much better with
  some themes.

- An empty return will once again log you into the timed user
  as it did before I broke it

- The Xsession now displays $0 in output (Steve Chaplin, #117898)

- There is now a gdmtranslate libexec proggie that does what
  the gettext command does, so we get translations from scripts
  even on user systems (ones without developer kind of packages)

- Fix gdmaskpass internationalization

- Lots of random minor fixes

- Translation updates (Artur Flinta, Vincent van Adrighem,
  Duarte Loreto, Pablo Gonzalo del Campo, Francisco Javier Fernandez,
  Hasbullah Bin Pit, Noor Azurah Anuar, Christian Neumair, 
  Miloslav Trmac, Danilo Segan, Serbian team, Kang Jeong-Hee)

Note:  GDM2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp mkp net>, and
has for a while now been maintained by the Queen of England.  She is usually
not responsive to bug reports or feature requests.  You can try to send them
to me however.

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

Note3:  Note3 has been depracated ...

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

Webpage: http://www.jirka.org/gdm.html
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gdm/2.4/
ftp://ftp.5z.com/pub/gdm/

Sorry no RPMS.  There is a spec file included in the tarball and it may or may
not work (it should, and it did some time ago but I haven't tried it lately).

Have fun,

George

PS:  I am planning to apply for a copyright on stupidity to which I have
aquired license rights to when I bought Idiocy, Inc.  I have revoked SCO's
license to use and/or sell stupidity and am herby requiring they destroy
all copies of said stupidity.  Furthermore I will be announcing a plan
to license run-only license of stupidity for current users for the low
price of $10,000 per brain.  This license is only for using your current
stupidity and does not allow you to modify or even analize your stupidity
as you would be infringing on my IP rights.  I am now asking for 1 gazillion
dollars of damages from SCO for lost revenue since stupidity is the primary
mode of human activity ranging from SOHO use to large enterprise usage.
Stupidity is used to run 98% of the world's corporations, which tops UNIX
server usage by quite a bit.

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   A clever man commits no minor blunders.
                       -- Goethe