GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 159604
Display MOTD file when logging into GNOME
Last modified: 2008-04-09 16:20:57 UTC
(I have placed this under the "gnome-desktop" category but please forgive me if this is not the most appropriate place for it.) 1. When the user logs into GNOME, a simple dialogue box should appear displaying the MOTD (Message of the Day) file. Traditionally, at the command line, this always appeared upon log in, so GNOME should have this functionality too. 2. The dialogue box should have two buttons, one being "Okay" to dismiss the message. (It will then reappear the next time the user logs in.) The second button should be "Do not show again until message updated) or more appropriate words to that affect. When this is clicked, the message will not appear on any subsequent log-ins until the System Administrator updates the Message of the Day. 3. When the root user logs in, a third button should be available, this being "Edit Message." The user can then input or deleted text, revising the Message of the Day.
Seems like a unique feature request, I will mark as new. Note that you can probably achieve the same functionality with an application like zenity and putting it in the session startup...
Created attachment 53025 [details] [review] Patch that implements MOTD in gnome-session
Created attachment 53026 [details] gsm-motd.c
Created attachment 53027 [details] gsm-motd.h
I am the person who originally logged this suggestion quite a while ago. I have noticed, with interest, the discussion here: http://live.gnome.org/UnixPowerForDesktop and I tend to agree with Gratton's comments regarding the idea of having a notification bubble that dismisses itself after a time. Great to see that my idea has been taken onboard by developers (I am not a programmer myself.) Really makes it seem that open source works and that people are listening. The whole idea of bringing Unix Power to the Desktop is fascinating and I look forward eagerly to see how you strike a balance between flexibility and your already excellent standards of usability. Keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to 2.16 and, eventually, Topaz.
FWIW I don't think this needs to go in the session manager. I think it could easily be done via a separate program that either pops up a window or shows something in the notification area. In general I think the session manager should be as small as possible and have as little UI as possible, and only things which really must be done in the session manager should be done there.
I agree with Tom. However, we could decide to ship a small executable within the gnome-session tarball that would use the autostart spec to achieve this.
It occurred to me today that this could easily be done with zenity. Either it could be done by modifying zenity to have some session-related command line options, or it could be done more directly by running zenity with the new gnome-session-wrapper program (see bug #60697) with --style=always
Hi! It's over one year after the last comment. Any news? We have already something like this implemented - a Leave message gnome-screensaver feature. So it will be great to discuss this issue with gnome-screensaver developers.
I created motdoux last year, to handle this. I need to make it public, though...
With the new code base, this could/should be implement by creating a .desktop similar to: [Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=Message of the Day Exec=/usr/bin/gnome-motd OnlyShowIn=GNOME; AutostartCondition=GNOME /desktop/apps/gnome-motd/show_dialog X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=Application gnome-session should check the gconf condition and run gnome-motd accordingly. This program would just show a dialog/notification/whatever. I guess gnome-motd should not reside in gnome-session. Maybe gnome-control-center? Comments?
Re-assigning to gnome-control-center for further comments. This is definitely not part of gnome-session.
Gah, more than a year ago, I had written motdoux, a small app that was just doing this. I need to release it...
It's certainly more of a gnome-session issue than it is a control-center issue. Still, it looks like we agree it's a job for a third-party app (which apparently already sort of exists ;-)), so closing. Please file any further complaints against Vincent...