Where is the GDM setup gone?

cb474 · 2009-10-14 08:44:56

When I run:

gksu -u gdm dbus-launch gnome-appearance-properties

I get:

Failed to run dbus-launch 'gnome-appearance-properties' as user gdm.
Failed to communicate with gksu-run-helper.
Received:
Your account has expired; please contact your system administrator
/bin/su: incorrect password
While expecting:
gksu: waiting

I did the thing of changing the /etc/passwd file and I'm executing the command as root. What gives?

Also, how do I run the commands like:

sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename

If I don't have sudo setup?

Crazycheese · 2009-10-14 09:02:25

Well, the title on wiki page sayd if you have "Account not available", not "Account expired".
This is something a bit different. It looks like gdm acc differs on your setup from mine.

Anyway, this is part of passwd on my machine that defines gdm. Maybe you could compare it to yours to filter the problem(backups!):
gdm:x:120:1001:PolicyKit:/var/lib/gdm:/sbin/nologin

"/sbin/nologin" is default and "/bin/bash" is required only for temporal gdm hacking. Keep /bin/bash for time of hacking.
Maybe PolicyKit prevents something..?

cb474 · 2009-10-14 09:14:14

My gdm line in the passwd file reads:

gdm:x:120:1002:PolicyKit:/var/lib/gdm:/sbin/nologin

As I said, I already tried changing it to /usr/bin/bash, as the wiki says. And I see that you have "1001" instead of "1002," but changing that still gave me the same result. And I tried both /bin/bash, as you suggest, and /usr/bin/bash, as the wiki says, but all result in the same error dialogue.

Crazycheese · 2009-10-14 09:31:19

cb474 wrote:

My gdm line in the passwd file reads:
... And I tried .... /usr/bin/bash, as the wiki says

Thx, corrected. My error.

By the way.. does you root account have password??..
Because of this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=951795

cb474 · 2009-10-14 10:07:24

Thanks for the suggestion. I can login as root without a problem. "passwd -u root" didn't make a difference.

So I just went ahead and installed sudo and it works fine that way. Weird.

cb474 · 2009-10-14 10:39:01

So I have another question, does this mean the archlinux-themes-gdm package can't be used with gdm anymore?

[rant]I have to say, I was perfectly happy with the interface on the old gdm. The new interface doesn't seem to add anything to me. It's a perfect example of why I'm so worried about the interface changes planned for Gnome 3.0 and Gnome Shell. The new gdm interface seems like an attempt at making something more "user friendly," while actually just making it more complicated, adding a pointless animation, and generally breaking what didn't need to be fixed. It actually now takes more keyboard strokes and/or mouse clicks to login. Even if you disable the user list. It's so annoying, I can't believe it.[/rant]

Last edited by cb474 (2009-10-14 10:40:43)

blasse · 2009-10-14 10:44:20

cb474 wrote:

So I have another question, does this mean the archlinux-themes-gdm package can't be used with gdm anymore?
[rant]I have to say, I was perfectly happy with the interface on the old gdm. The new interface doesn't seem to add anything to me. It's a perfect example of why I'm so worried about the interface changes planned for Gnome 3.0 and Gnome Shell. The new gdm interface seems like an attempt at making something more "user friendly," while actually just making it more complicated, adding a pointless animation, and generally breaking what didn't need to be fixed. It actually now takes more keyboard strokes and/or mouse clicks to login. Even if you disable the user list. It's so annoying, I can't believe it.[/rant]

As for new GDM - it's not about interface, it's about safety.
http://live.gnome.org/GDM/NewDesign

cb474 · 2009-10-14 12:07:06

I have no doubt there are lots of worthwhile under-the-hood changes and maybe I'm not getting it, but I'm having trouble seeing why the safety changes require redesigning the interface.

That aside, any hope for arch themes for the new gdm?

InsektO · 2009-10-14 12:26:27

cb474 wrote:

That aside, any hope for arch themes for the new gdm?

That would be good. I'm keeping gdm now in IgnorePkg until there's a way to change it to the arch gdm themes i have.

cb474 · 2009-10-14 12:28:17

InsektO wrote:

That would be good. I'm keeping gdm now in IgnorePkg until there's a way to change it to the arch gdm themes i have.

Does that mean I could use the old version of gdm with Gnome 2.28?

[Edit: So far so good. I've got it in IgnorePkg now too. I hope the arch themes do get packaged for the new gdm somehow, but it seemed like people above were saying gdm doesn't really allow theming anymore.]

Last edited by cb474 (2009-10-14 12:52:45)

cb474 · 2009-10-15 00:06:31

Here's a couple other tips on configuring the new gdm, from the Ubuntu thread referred to above. Since I've reverted to the old version, I can't vouch for these working or not.

From: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= … tcount=500

To use Gnome's UI to edit the appearance of the new GDM directly:
gksudo -u gdm dbus-launch gnome-appearance-properties
To change all other GDM user settings (mostly irrelevant I suspect):
gksudo -u gdm dbus-launch gnome-control-center
To edit GConf as the GDM user:
gksudo -u gdm dbus-launch gconf-editor

From: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= … tcount=501

If you want to get rid of the accessibility icon from the GDM 'taskbar', it's a little more tricky, because someone's made it 'mandatory'. From the Run dialogue (Alt-F2):
gksudo gedit /var/lib/gdm/.gconf.mandatory/%gconf-tree.xml
Comment out the following section:
<dir name="accessibility">
    <dir name="keyboard">
        <entry name="enable" mtime="1253866193" type="bool" value="true"/>
    </dir>
</dir>
It should then look like this:

In the GDM control centre (see above post), you can then disable the icon from the completely non-intuitive location of Keyboard -> Accessibility by unticking 'Accessibility features can be toggled with keyboard shortcuts' (what usability genius came up with that? )

Last edited by cb474 (2009-10-15 00:07:33)

jamesbannon · 2009-10-15 02:57:23

It sort of worked for me. Now at least I've got rid of that horrible green leaf background and have decent text.

PingPing · 2009-10-15 09:15:28

Sod this. I'm moving to SLIM (for now).

kel_p · 2009-10-15 09:46:17

PingPing wrote:

Sod this. I'm moving to SLIM (for now).

So am I..

insanemal · 2009-10-15 09:57:43

Well.. I found my issue... lol.. I used --type string instead of boolean

HAHAHHA im so stupid sometimes

fifafrazer · 2009-10-15 20:16:52

With Slim you'll have problems with automount in Gnome 2.28. I used to have no login manager - now I'm forced to gdm. How can you make it auto-login? I remember an option in the gui years ago when I used ubuntu.

lgolebio · 2009-10-15 21:17:50

I'm using autologin with the newest gnome. I have this in my /etc/gdm/custom.conf

....
[daemon]
Greeter=/usr/lib/gdm/gdmgreeter
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=yout_user_name
....

Can anybody tell me why I have to type root password every time I change the cpufreq with cpufreq-applet ? Why it doesn't remember the password for root ?

cb474 · 2009-10-16 02:29:13

With Slim you also won't be able to shutdown or restart from the Gnome shutdown dialogue. That's also true of xdm. I was going to use one of those as my solution until I installed them and experienced that problem. I'm pretty happy just downgrading to the older version of gdm. No problems so far. I know someone said the new version of gdm improves security. I'm wondering in what ways that's true?

sultanoswing · 2009-10-16 08:05:59

Bah. Just don't bother using gdm at all. Real men use the shell to login!

(OK, OK - I'm sure some REAL men will chime in that real men ONLY use the shell)

Edit your .xinitrc as follows:

exec ck-launch-session gnome-session

and then your ~/.bash_profile like so:

. $HOME/.bashrc
if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then
  xinit
  logout
fi

[EDIT] updated - yes it's bash_profile - thanks owain!

Last edited by sultanoswing (2009-10-16 22:05:12)

owain · 2009-10-16 09:20:49

sultanoswing wrote:

and then your ~/.bashrc_profile

~/.bash_profile, you mean?

Thanks, useful, because I'm trying to pinpoint the source of random crashes since the Gnome update. However, logging in this way prevents use of the 'switch user' option within Gnome.

knedlyk · 2009-10-16 11:04:22

I moved to LXDM. It was wrong decision to move unstable and untested Gnome 2.28 with buggy GDM to the extra repository. It should be in testing for a much longer time.

zodmaner · 2009-10-16 12:35:09

knedlyk wrote:

I moved to LXDM. It was wrong decision to move unstable and untested Gnome 2.28 with buggy GDM to the extra repository. It should be in testing for a much longer time.

Well, to be fair most of the "problems" come from changes upstream that was not a bug (redesign of GDM, for example). Also, the new GNOME and GDM have been sitting in a special unstable repository separated from testing repo for quite some time, so I wouldn't called them untested.

It was just that us people who didn't use GNOME (but rather just GDM) was caught off guard.

But yeah, the new GDM really is frustrating to use, especially if you use any DE/WM other than GNOME.

zenlord · 2009-10-16 12:52:48

Are you sure gdm is buggy?I only see 1 bugreport and 1 incompatibility with the old gdm-themes...

Calm down people. It is not because it is new / different that it is bad. I'm sure problems will be sorted out and that there will be an alternative to gdm_setup soon.

blasse · 2009-10-16 13:23:17

zenlord wrote:

Are you sure gdm is buggy?I only see 1 bugreport and 1 incompatibility with the old gdm-themes...
Calm down people. It is not because it is new / different that it is bad. I'm sure problems will be sorted out and that there will be an alternative to gdm_setup soon.

I'm not so sure. First version of redesigned gdm was 2.24, which was considered unstable. Then the 2.26 comes, with gdm 2.26 - also considered unstable. Now, after over year of testing it by gnome developers it became stable with 2.28. But without gui...

What more, gdm is not buggy - it's just VERY hard to configure now

Last edited by blasse (2009-10-16 13:23:51)

cleanrock · 2009-10-16 14:34:14

They shouldnt have released gnome 2.28 until they had a configuration of gdm which was as easy to use as the previous.
In my eyes this is a good example of the crazyness that can go on in the open sauce world .. releasing a new version that has some functionality reduced considerable.
I bet most gnome developers are busy implementing "fun" things like eye-candy (gnome-shell).

Arch Linux

#26 2009-10-14 08:44:56

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#27 2009-10-14 09:02:25

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#28 2009-10-14 09:14:14

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#29 2009-10-14 09:31:19

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#30 2009-10-14 10:07:24

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#31 2009-10-14 10:39:01

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#32 2009-10-14 10:44:20

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#33 2009-10-14 12:07:06

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#34 2009-10-14 12:26:27

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#35 2009-10-14 12:28:17

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#36 2009-10-15 00:06:31

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#37 2009-10-15 02:57:23

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#38 2009-10-15 09:15:28

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#39 2009-10-15 09:46:17

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#40 2009-10-15 09:57:43

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#41 2009-10-15 20:16:52

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#42 2009-10-15 21:17:50

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#43 2009-10-16 02:29:13

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#44 2009-10-16 08:05:59

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#45 2009-10-16 09:20:49

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#46 2009-10-16 11:04:22

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#47 2009-10-16 12:35:09

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#48 2009-10-16 12:52:48

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#49 2009-10-16 13:23:17

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

#50 2009-10-16 14:34:14

Re: Where is the GDM setup gone?

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