[orca-list] accessible login instructions

[<aerospace1028 hotmail com>]

greetings,
I have written up a set of instructions documenting how I set up accessible login on my ubuntu machine.  
These may be of use to new users.  Would it be possible for someone to review the below instructions and 
possibly post them to the wiki?  (I'm not interested in learning to edit wiki pages quite yet.)

thank you:-)




The below are the steps I used to enable accessible login under Ubuntu 8.04.  Note that specific requirements 
and file locations might vary from one platform to another.

Step 1: edit gdm.conf-custom:

The first step is to put the appropriate definitions in the gdm custom configuration file.  In Ubuntu 8.04 
this is located at /etc/gdm/gdm.conf. (1)

If you have not made any modifications to this file before, it will most likely consist of a commented header 
section followed by eight empty sections (daemon, security, xdmcp, gui, greeter, chooser, debug and 

servers).  

The general syntax for modifying the gdm custom configuration file is =.  Note that the keys must appear in 
the correct section of the file.  A sample of all keys and their default values 

may be found in gdm.conf, located in the same directory as gdm.conf-custom. (2)

To enable accessible login, we only need two keys located in the daemon section.  Below is the text extracted 
from the gdm.conf file showing the two keys.

# Launch the greeter with an additional list of colon separated GTK+ modules.
# This is useful for enabling additional feature support e.g. GNOME
# accessibility framework. Only "trusted" modules should be allowed to minimize
# security holes
#AddGtkModules=false
# By default, these are the accessibility modules.
#GtkModulesList=gail:atk-bridge:/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libdwellmouselistener:/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libkeymouselistener

To enable accessible login, the "AddGtkModules" key must be set to true, and the "GtkModulesList" key must be 
uncommented.  You can copy  and paste the key assignments directly from gdm.conf to 

gdm.conf-custom, or type them in manually: just be sure to place them between the lines that say "[daemon]" 
and "[security]."  Afterwards, your gdm.conf-custom file should look like:

[daemon]

# Launch the greeter with an additional list of colon separated GTK+ modules.
# This is useful for enabling additional feature support e.g. GNOME
# accessibility framework. Only "trusted" modules should be allowed to minimize
# security holes
AddGtkModules=true
# By default, these are the accessibility modules.
GtkModulesList=gail:atk-bridge:/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libdwellmouselistener:/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libkeymouselistener

[security]

[xdmcp]

[gui]

[greeter]

[chooser]

[debug]

[servers]

Step 2: update gdm

Now we must tell gdm about the changes we are requesting.  To do this, we use the gdmflexiserver command. (3)

The general form of this command would be 

gdmflexiserver --command="UPDATE_CONFIG /"

With reguards with the above changes to "AddGtkModules" and "GtkModules" list--both in the daemon 
section--the commands would be:

$gdmflexiserver --command="UPDATE_CONFIG daemon/AddGtkModules"
$gdmflexiserver --command="UPDATE_CONFIG daemon/GtkModulesList"

step 3: giving the gdm group audio permissions

Now, so orca can speak durring login, we need to add gdm to the approved users of sound.  In the /etc/groups 
file, locate the line starting with audio and append ",gdm" to the list if it is not already there.

step 4: [optional] customize login functions.

Located in the same directory as gdm.conf and gdm.conf-custom is a subdirectory "modules."  The files 
modules/AccessKeyMouseEvents and modules/AccessDwellMouseEvents control the different 

"gestures" allowed durring login.  The headers of these files should adiquately explain their modification 
and use.

By default, when activated through the steps above, pressing and holding CTRL+s for one second at the login 
prompt will launch orca with speech enabled.  Also, pressing and holding CTRL+m for one 

second will launch orca in magnification mode, while the key combinations CTRL+g or CTRL+o held for one 
second will launch orca with both speech and magnification.

NOTES:

1: All other documentation (including the default ubuntu help) direct the user to look for these files in 
/etc/X11/gdm/.

2: One may optionally modify the gdm.conf file directly, but I would recommend making a back-up for recovery 
and reference of default settings.

3: the gdm configuration files indicate that "gdm-restart" is another possible method for reloading gdm's 
settings, but by default under Ubuntu, gdm-restart provides the "command not found" message.


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