[Mageia-dev] A note on autologin and startx

Sun Apr 8 18:39:46 CEST 2012

2012/4/8 Colin Guthrie <mageia at colin.guthr.ie>:
+> 'Twas brillig, and Wolfgang Bornath at 07/04/12 08:50 did gyre and gimble:
+>> 2012/4/7 Jose Jorge <lists.jjorge at free.fr>:
+>>> Le 06/04/2012 22:53, Colin Guthrie a écrit :
+>>>
+>>>> Couldn't agree more. I'd say we can happily provide a tool to configure
+>>>> autologin, but if that is configured, it basically just sets the DM to
+>>>> gdm, and lets' it do the autologin.
+>>>>
+>>>> The fact that gdm is used should be mostly hidden from users.
+>>>>
+>>>>> From what I've seen, gdm seems to be the best implementation of the
+>>>> whole pam and authentication stuff, so this would be my personal
+>>>> favourite.
+>>>>
+>>>> Col
+>>>
+>>> Please note that autologin is lightweight and fast, so I use it for very old
+>>> systems, where even the 30Mb of RAM eaten by gdm count.
+>>> But I just can agree that if no one has time to fix it, we can drop it. I'll
+>>> be away from computers for  15 days ...
+>>
+>> Does GDM provide change of desktop as KDM does?
+>>
+>> My scenario: I have KDE and Gnome and Xfce installed. For system start
+>> I have autologin set to start KDE.
+>
+> I'm guessing you've configured this inside KDE tools rather than inside
+> the drak* tools? You'll see why I presume that below:
+
+No, I always use the draktools for system configuration. I am one of
+those who would like to differ between system configuration and
+desktop configuration.
+
+>> But when I am in a KDE session I
+>> sometimes logout and use the upcoming KDM to start a Gnome or Xfce
+>> session or even a session on a vt.
+>
+> If you use the autologin package, if you logout, you log back in again
+> straight away (it's a hook inside prefdm which starts the display
+> manager and it simply runs autologin if it's configured!)
+>
+> Now I'd be tempted to make this a "one time operation" e.g. if autologin
+> works and exits, then we should write a flag somewhere to say "don't
+> autologin again" i.e. make it only work once.
+>
+> This would solve this problem.
+
+Yes. That's what I want. I have autologin for the first start. If I
+log out it is mostly to change desktop or change user, so I can not
+use autologin for that.
+
+>> Does this work with GDM as well? If so I'm all in.
+>
+> Yeah, but keep in mind, we wouldn't be forcing users to use gdm all the
+> time anyway. What I'd propose (and this is for mga3 remember), is that
+> if autologin was configured, we'd simply make gdm kick in and process
+> that autologin.
+>
+> If autologin is not configured, or the user has already logged in and
+> has now logged out, we would just dump you to your chosen DM (i.e. KDM).
+
+Good.
+
+> So we'd only be using GDM as a tool here, not really for it's GUI
+> specifically. That said, we may have to ensure that when we use gdm in
+> this way that it exits after the user session rather than reverting back
+> to it's login screen, allowing the prefdm process to be automatically
+> restarted and thus giving you your chosen DM.
+>
+> Anyway, this can be discussed in more depth after mga2 is out the door :)
+
+Yes, I was not aware of this being a mga3 plan.
+
+-- 
+wobo
+