GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 395358
"Happy Gnome" theme shows a face browser
Last modified: 2007-04-10 05:34:13 UTC
That bug has been opened on https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm/+bug/78252 "Binary package hint: gdm The "Happy Gnome" gdm theme is broken in Feisty (see screenshot) : it displays a face browser, but shouldn't, as it never did, and as there is already a variant of this very theme that inclues a browser. http://librarian.launchpad.net/5620985/Screenshot.png Face browser shouldn't be showing up..."
I think we should discuss this issue a bit. In 2.17.0 I modified GDM so that the Face Browser is much smarter in gdmgreeter. Previously, if you created a gdmgreeter theme with a Face Browser, but there were no users to display, the face browser widgets still appeared on the screen, but empty. This looked bad, and I believe the reason why gdmgreeter previously required different themes with and without Face Browser support was because it looked bad if you didn't have any users to display. However, this created a bit of confusion since gdmlogin and gdmgreeter worked differently. For gdmlogin, the Browser/Include/IncludeAll keys control the Face Browser, but for gdmgreeter it is turned on/off based on the theme you pick. So, now, GDM is smarter and will just remove the Face Browser widget (and the backing rectangle with alpha) if there are no users to display. This means that gdmgreeter works more like gdmlogin and can work with/without the FaceBrowser. Users can control whether it shows up usin gthe same Browser/Include/IncludeAll keys used by gdmlogin (in other words, gdmsetup works the same in both gdmlogin and gdmgreeter for turning on/off the face browser). Because of this, I added the face browser to both the circles and happygnome theme so that when users go into gdmsetup and change the configuration to turn on the Browser, it just "works" without them having to change the gdmgreeter theme as well. I'd recommend that if you don't like the Face Browser showing up that you simply change your Browser configuration setting to "false" and it should go away. Even using an old version of GDM, it doesn't really make sense to have Browser=true in your configuration file if you were using a gdmgreeter theme that didn't support the Face Browser. However, perhaps it doesn't make sense to ship both happygnome and happygnome-list anymore since only one theme would do. I decided to keep both because some users out there may be using one or the other, and I wanted to minimize the changes users would see. I didn't expect that some users (such as yourself) would be using a gdmgreeter theme that didn't support the Face Browser but still be setting Browser=true in the config. I'm open to discussion. For backwards "sensibilities" if it makes sense for happygnome to not include the Face Browser, we can remove the xml code that makes it available for this theme. Or perhaps we should get rid of one of them (happygnome or happygnome-list) and just make one a symlink to the other so that users who might be using either theme in their configuration file would still work (though the appearance is a bit different between the two so some users may complain that the look changed). What do you or others think makes the most sense here?
Any thoughts?
On my Ubuntu Feisty box, it does this too - and Browser=false is set in gdm.conf. Seems like it is more secure to leave the browser off - and I'd like to have it this way. Regards, Peter Clifton
It is really broken if the browser is shown when the key is false. I don't see this problem. Can you check a few things for me? Could you run this command: gdmflexiserver --command="GET_CONFIG greeter/Browser" If it returns "true" then you don't have Browser=false, and you should correct this. Since GDM uses multiple configuration files it is possible that the value might not be what you think it is. Running the above command will tell us what the daemon thinks the configuration value is, which would be useful to note. If the value is actually false, then run "gdmflexiserver --command=GET_CONFIG_FILE" and "gdmflexiserver --command="GET_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE" and let me know what the value of the Browser key is in the two files. Note that gdm.conf is the *old* configuration file, so values in that file may not be applied. GDM does have code so that it will use the old gdm.conf instead of the custom.conf file, but your distro may have broken this feature if the two files are installed to different directories (and they didn't patch the code in GDM to know about this). Also, what version of GDM are you using? The bug report says 2.17.x, but I'd like to know the exact version. Once we address the issue of your FaceBrowser showing, we can discuss whether it makes sense for circles to not have a FaceBrowser by default.
Ok, output from the commands requested: gdmflexiserver --command="GET_CONFIG greeter/Browser" OK false gdmflexiserver --command=GET_CONFIG_FILE OK /etc/gdm/gdm.conf grep -i browser /etc/gdm/gdm.conf | grep -v "^#" Browser=false gdmflexiserver --command="GET_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE" OK /etc/gdm/gdm.conf-custom grep -i browser /etc/gdm/gdm.conf-custom | grep -v "^#" (This file is actually all comments appart from empty sections such as [greeter] [chooser] etc.. I'm running Ubuntu Feisty, and gdm reports: gdm --version GDM 2.18.0 apt-cache showpkg gdm Package: gdm Versions: 2.18.0-0ubuntu2 (/var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_feisty_main_binary-i386_Packages) (/var/lib/dpkg/status) Description Language: File: /var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_feisty_main_binary-i386_Packages MD5: 6c08dfbdac506777ff44a81cd07a6e34 Having just grabbed the source for the debian package, it looks like Debian + Ubuntu modify it quite heavily. http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gdm/gdm_2.18.0-0ubuntu2.dsc http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gdm/gdm_2.18.0.orig.tar.gz http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gdm/gdm_2.18.0-0ubuntu2.diff.gz Regards, Peter Clifton
Okay, this is not a bug with your distro, but a bug in the GDM code. I'll fix the browser so that it doesn't display the face browser in gdmgreeter.
I fixed 2.18 and CVS head so gdmgreeter no longer displays the greeter if Browser != true. So, now that this bug is fixed, do we still think we should remove the browser from these themes. I think it was showing just because of a bug. Personally I think it is a neat feature that users can make gdmgreeter themes show the face browser and turn the feature on and off. That said, gdmsetup needs a slight enhancement so that users can flip this Browser=true/false toggle when working in gdmgreeter mode. If people think that the themes in 2.18 should have the face browser removed, then I will fix the themes to remove the userlist there. However, I'd like to fix this in 2.19 so that the default gdmgreeter themes do have a face browser, but they only become enabled if the user turns on Browser mode. Or if people think its okay to leave it in 2.18 as is with the fix to not show when Browser=true, that's fine with me too. What do people think.
I fixed 2.18.1 so that the circles and happygnome theme no longer have a face browser. Since gdmsetup didn't get updated in time for 2.18 I'm backing out this change. In GDM 2.19/2.20, we will fix gdmsetup so that the browser option can be selected with the Greeter and this key will be honored from 2.10 onwards. This should fix this issue.