[Mageia-dev] A note on autologin and startx

[Wolfgang Bornath]

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