[SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

MilanKnizek · 2010-12-15 21:06:09

In arch, once the GDM screen appears there is no user selected (highlighted) in the list of available users. Pressing Enter does not select the 1st user in the list. The user has to use mouse or cursor keys.

In Ubuntu, once the GDM screen appears, the 1st user is already selected - then it is enough to press Enter + password + Enter...

Can anyone advice if it is a matter of GDM theme or Ubuntu's patch of GDM?

Last edited by MilanKnizek (2011-01-15 12:31:26)

Awebb · 2010-12-15 22:14:59

It's a known issue. The board search will bring light to your darkness.

MilanKnizek · 2010-12-16 17:32:37

It definitely must be my poor skills of selecting the correct keywords that do keep me in scary darkness.

I am happy to know how many users can now autologin, change cursor theme, avoid gdm crashes, choose users for display in greeter, yet my life continues to be poisened by the little annoyance I described earlier.

My days are not over yet and I keep on searching the light...

jarryson · 2010-12-16 17:37:46

+1, i thought it's my mistake ro something that GDM can't select the user, had to use mouse to choose

MilanKnizek · 2010-12-17 20:21:53

We're not alone:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=652938

wonder · 2010-12-17 20:49:07

upstream says is metacity fault

Last edited by wonder (2010-12-17 20:49:22)

Knute · 2010-12-17 22:39:08

How could it be a metacity fault if the windowmanager has yet to be selected??

wonder · 2010-12-17 23:29:12

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=629310

Knute · 2010-12-18 01:46:50

So you are saying that metacity is started when gdm starts???

If that's the case, then metacity would have to be in the "Depends On" list when you do a

 7:39PM % pacman -Si gdm                                                        ~ (knute) pts/0
Repository     : extra
Name           : gdm
Version        : 2.32.0-1
URL            : http://www.gnome.org
Licenses       : GPL
Groups         : gnome-extra
Provides       : None
Depends On     : libcanberra>=0.25  libxklavier>=5.0  tcp_wrappers  gnome-session>=2.32.0
                 upower>=0.9.5  consolekit>=0.4.1-4
Optional Deps  : gnome-panel-bonobo: needed for user switch applet
Conflicts With : fast-user-switch-applet
Replaces       : fast-user-switch-applet
Download Size  : 977.45 K
Installed Size : 7340.00 K
Packager       : Ionut Biru <ibiru@archlinux.org>
Architecture   : i686
Build Date     : Mon 27 Sep 2010 12:50:11 PM CDT
MD5 Sum        : 2bee9dc53f568bc8ab78b61fea67781e
Description    : Gnome Display Manager (a reimplementation of xdm)

 7:40PM %                                                                       ~ (knute) pts/0

Hrmmm.... Don't see that as a depends, so I think that the person that stated
that they thought it was something with metacity, I think is incorrect.

It just doesn't make sense to me that you would have to start a windowmanager BEFORE you login. I don't have a solution, it's just that the suggestion doesn't make sense to me.

MilanKnizek · 2010-12-18 07:23:29

Knute wrote:

So you are saying that metacity is started when gdm starts???
... cut on purpose ...
Hrmmm.... Don't see that as a depends, so I think that the person that stated
that they thought it was something with metacity, I think is incorrect.
It just doesn't make sense to me that you would have to start a windowmanager BEFORE you login. I don't have a solution, it's just that the suggestion doesn't make sense to me.

Hey! My arch says the same (after reboot, gdm loaded, no user logged in X):

[root@comp ~] # ps aux | grep metacity
gdm       4197  0.0  0.3 265300 12336 ?        Sl   08:15   0:00 metacity
root      4309  0.0  0.0   8500   960 tty1     S+   08:16   0:00 grep metacity

Wondering, if it can help to use other window manager (or none, if possible).

EDIT: Ubuntu 10.10 on my netbook uses also metacity, yet the bug does not appear there.

Last edited by MilanKnizek (2010-12-18 07:38:47)

Stunts · 2010-12-18 17:21:16

I suppose it could be tested by editing the following geconf entry for the user GDM:

/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager

and changing it to openbox, or something. I remember trying it with compiz some time ago, but it slowed down my startup quite a bit.

wonder · 2010-12-18 18:00:20

guys, don't make me slap somebody. STOP SAYING THAT IS NOT IN UBUNTU.

look at how many patches is in gdm ubuntu. is simple to point what's the one that fix the "issue".

try them one by one and if you find it let me know and i'll include it in the package

Stunts · 2010-12-18 19:00:54

Wonder's solution is in fact much more mature...
But I must say I loled at your happy face avatar and the "slapping" part of your post.
I am currently testing some of Ubuntu's patches and see if that solves things. However, some of them won't work in GDM 2.32 (ubuntu uses 2.30).

Stunts · 2010-12-18 19:34:29

OK, so after working on this for a while I have reached a roadblock.
I have tested a few of ubuntu's patches that worked fine, but none solved the problem.
However, one of the ubuntu patches _appears_ (from what I can read in the code, but I have never programmed in C before) to solve the problem, but I can't apply this patch.
The patch can be found here: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m … ian.tar.gz
The file has plenty of patches, but the one I _think_ may solve the problem is this:
29_switch_user.patch
After removing a few parts of the patch that failed to apply (mostly related to plymouth), I am left with this:
http://pastebin.com/4RXybNnw

I modified the official PKGBUILD in order to add this patch too, but now it fails to compile. I have no idea what the error means, but is there some workaround for it? Or is it refering to something specific to Ubuntu/GDM 2.30.

Here is the error:

gdm-simple-slave.c: In function 'gdm_simple_slave_set_username':
gdm-simple-slave.c:562:28: error: 'GdmSimpleSlavePrivate' has no member named 'username'
gdm-simple-slave.c:563:20: error: 'GdmSimpleSlavePrivate' has no member named 'username'
gdm-simple-slave.c: In function 'gdm_simple_slave_set_property':
gdm-simple-slave.c:1288:14: error: 'PROP_USERNAME' undeclared (first use in this function)
gdm-simple-slave.c:1288:14: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in
gdm-simple-slave.c: In function 'gdm_simple_slave_get_property':
gdm-simple-slave.c:1308:14: error: 'PROP_USERNAME' undeclared (first use in this function)
gdm-simple-slave.c:1309:51: error: 'GdmSimpleSlavePrivate' has no member named 'username'
gdm-simple-slave.c: In function 'gdm_simple_slave_class_init':
gdm-simple-slave.c:1348:42: error: 'PROP_USERNAME' undeclared (first use in this function)
make[3]: *** [gdm-simple-slave.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/francisco/Desktop/extra-x86_64.r102254/src/gdm-2.32.0/daemon'
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/francisco/Desktop/extra-x86_64.r102254/src/gdm-2.32.0/daemon'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/francisco/Desktop/extra-x86_64.r102254/src/gdm-2.32.0'
make: *** [all] Error 2

Help anyone?
Thanks.

jarryson · 2010-12-20 07:55:48

yes, seems it's metacity's problem.

#cat /var/log/gdm/\:0-greeter.log
windowmanager warnning：CurrentTime used to choose focus window; focus window may not be correct.
windowmanager warnning：Got a request to focus the no_focus_window with a timestamp of 0.  This shouldn't happen!

Stunts · 2010-12-20 13:52:28

So, does that mean that I should instead be checking what patches Ubuntu uses on metacity rather then GDM?

ZoSoDaltrey · 2010-12-29 14:49:48

Hello I'm a new user in Arch, so I can't solve this problem, but I can tell you in a virtualbox machine with guest additions installed it works perfectly, maybe looking there you can get more ideas.

eldragon · 2010-12-29 15:12:13

i dont think this bug was present in 2.30

so that might be the reason ubuntu doesnt have it.

Stunts · 2011-01-13 19:47:21

Latest GDM fixed it for me.
Anyone know what it was?

wonder · 2011-01-13 19:49:39

Stunts wrote:

Latest GDM fixed it for me.
Anyone know what it was?

yes. bug in 2.32.0 and fixed by this patch: http://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/ … oser.patch

is pretty simple to find out yourself by looking the repostory.
http://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/ … b097c66702

Stunts · 2011-01-13 19:57:09

Thank you!
Very useful info. I will use it in the future!

MilanKnizek · 2011-01-15 08:42:02

Since I started the thread, I should say it works now, too. Hence I do so :-)

Awebb · 2011-01-15 11:10:51

Now I'm so used to pressing down->enter->password->enter, that I also do this when I'm in front of a windows machine at work. Now it's gone, leaving me behind with bad habits. GDM is a woman.

Stunts wrote:

Thank you!
Very useful info. I will use it in the future!

How about a [solved]? :-)

Last edited by Awebb (2011-01-15 11:14:33)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-15 21:06:09

[SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#2 2010-12-15 22:14:59

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#3 2010-12-16 17:32:37

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#4 2010-12-16 17:37:46

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#5 2010-12-17 20:21:53

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#6 2010-12-17 20:49:07

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#7 2010-12-17 22:39:08

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#8 2010-12-17 23:29:12

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#9 2010-12-18 01:46:50

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#10 2010-12-18 07:23:29

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#11 2010-12-18 17:21:16

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#12 2010-12-18 18:00:20

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#13 2010-12-18 19:00:54

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#14 2010-12-18 19:34:29

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#15 2010-12-20 07:55:48

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#16 2010-12-20 13:52:28

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#17 2010-12-29 14:49:48

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#18 2010-12-29 15:12:13

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#19 2011-01-13 19:47:21

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#20 2011-01-13 19:49:39

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#21 2011-01-13 19:57:09

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#22 2011-01-15 08:42:02

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

#23 2011-01-15 11:10:51

Re: [SOLVED] GDM - how to preselect the 1st user in the list on startup

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