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Bug 493737 - unconditionally replaces ~/.xsession-errors fifo with plain file
unconditionally replaces ~/.xsession-errors fifo with plain file
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gdm
Classification: Core
Component: general
2.20.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: GDM maintainers
GDM maintainers
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2007-11-05 13:44 UTC by Andras Korn
Modified: 2011-01-14 16:10 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 2.19/2.20


Description Andras Korn 2007-11-05 13:44:19 UTC 
Hi,

I'd like to have a ~/.xsession-errors FIFO which an svlogd(8) (from the
runit package) process reads from. This has the advantage of providing
timestamped, automatically rotated logs.

While I can modify the /etc/X11/Xsession script to leave my fifo alone,
gdm itself seems to replace it with a plain file no matter what I do.

Maybe gdm could be modified to only create/truncate the .xsession-errors
file if it doesn't exist or is a plain file? Surely, users who create a
fifo there can be assumed to know what they are doing (and thus to know
where to look if gdm blocks on trying to write to the fifo).

Andras

-- 
                 Andras Korn <korn at chardonnay.math.bme.hu>
                 <http://chardonnay.math.bme.hu/~korn/> QOTD:
 Amnesia and deja vu at the same time: a feeling you've forgotten this before.
Comment 1 Andras Korn 2007-11-05 13:49:22 UTC 
This is also Ubuntu bug 160182 (<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm/+bug/160182>).
Comment 2 Brian Cameron 2007-11-05 18:57:52 UTC 
If someone wants to create a patch to make GDM smarter like this, I'd accept it into the 2.20 branch.  However, note that GDM 2.21 is a rewrite, and I'm not sure how it will work with the $HOME/.xsession-errors file.  At the moment, I don't think 2.21 even writes this file at all.
Comment 3 William Jon McCann 2010-06-04 20:35:16 UTC 
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug.
However, you are using a version that is too old and not supported anymore. GNOME developers are no longer working on that version, so unfortunately there will not be any bug fixes for the version that you use.

By upgrading to a newer version of GNOME you could receive bug fixes and new functionality. You may need to upgrade your Linux distribution to obtain a newer version of GNOME.
Please feel free to reopen this bug if the problem still occurs with a newer version of GNOME.
Comment 4 JoSH Lehan 2010-06-07 01:43:38 UTC 
Does this bug still exist in the latest version?  I'm running gdm 2.20.10 and have been bitten by this bug.  It would be wonderful to see a fix for this, as it seems like a fairly easy bug to fix (just do stat() to see if the file is a regular file first, before deleting it).
Comment 5 Alexey Torkhov 2011-01-14 16:10:42 UTC 
I've made a patch that makes gdm not renaming .xsession-errors if it is non-regular file: see bug #639527.