#304406 xscreensaver: New Login button without gdmflexiserver

Package:
xscreensaver
Source:
xscreensaver
Description:
Screensaver daemon and frontend for X11
Submitter:
Thomas Prokosch
Date:
2015-12-25 11:24:04 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#304406#5
Date:
2005-04-12 22:00:20 UTC
From:
To:
On my Xfce powered laptop I am seeing a "New Login" button in xscreensaver's
password dialog even though no gdmflexiserver is present. Clicking on the
button leaves the screensaver running with an error message saying that
gdmflexiserver exited with an error.

A check whether a binary exists would be nice prior to running it.
#304406#10
Date:
2007-08-17 23:20:16 UTC
From:
To:
package xscreensaver
tags 304406 wontfix
severity 304406 wishlist
quit

Hi,

This is checked in compilation-time. I could build a
`xscreensaver-nonewlogin' package but I think could be annoying... And
if you're using no [x|g|k]dm I guess you should know that there's no
option to new login :).

That's why I refuse to fix this.

Regards,
Jose Luis.
#304406#17
Date:
2007-08-17 23:20:16 UTC
From:
To:
package xscreensaver
tags 304406 wontfix
severity 304406 wishlist
quit

Hi,

This is checked in compilation-time. I could build a
`xscreensaver-nonewlogin' package but I think could be annoying... And
if you're using no [x|g|k]dm I guess you should know that there's no
option to new login :).

That's why I refuse to fix this.

Regards,
Jose Luis.
#304406#22
Date:
2008-09-23 15:06:03 UTC
From:
To:
  (1) according to apt-file search, gdmflexiserver is *only* provided
      by gdm, not xdm (which I do happen to be running) nor kdm.  (kdm
      might provide something *like* it, but xscreensaver is hard
      coded to have
         *newLoginCommand:	gdmflexiserver -l -a -c FLEXI_XSERVER
      in the binary, so it wouldn't help if it did...)
  (2) per debian policy, 7.2 "binary dependencies", xscreensaver needs
      at *least* a "Suggests: gdm" to describe the above dependency...

While it would be *better* to see the button go away if it can't
possibly work, I think you at least need to correct the packaging to
reflect the above.
#304406#29
Date:
2011-04-22 19:30:23 UTC
From:
To:
Mark Eichin wrote:
Re 2) I have added Suggests: gdm | kdm-gdmcompat

To address the original issue of removing the button when the session
has not been started by gdm or kdm or there is no gdmflexiserver, I
can suggest making a little wrapper that checks for this and sets the
newLoginCommand property accordingly before launching the
xscreensaver-daemon. For this I would like to know exactly how the
xscreensaver-daemon is started in a XFCE session. Can somebody help me
with this?

Also, in sessions started by gdm the GDMSESSION environment variable
is defined. Is there something similar for sessions started by kdm? Or
xdm?

Tormod
#304406#32
Date:
2011-04-22 19:30:23 UTC
From:
To:
Mark Eichin wrote:
Re 2) I have added Suggests: gdm | kdm-gdmcompat

To address the original issue of removing the button when the session
has not been started by gdm or kdm or there is no gdmflexiserver, I
can suggest making a little wrapper that checks for this and sets the
newLoginCommand property accordingly before launching the
xscreensaver-daemon. For this I would like to know exactly how the
xscreensaver-daemon is started in a XFCE session. Can somebody help me
with this?

Also, in sessions started by gdm the GDMSESSION environment variable
is defined. Is there something similar for sessions started by kdm? Or
xdm?

Tormod
#304406#41
Date:
2012-02-18 23:40:18 UTC
From:
To:
I realize that I have been thinking totally backwards in trying to
solve this. Instead of xscreensaver trying to second guess how it has
been started and in which environment and figure out which commands it
should run, those session managers etc that launch xscreensaver should
rather tell xscreensaver if they provide a newLoginCommand in their
environment and what command that should be.

I haven't got any answer to my request above about how XFCE starts
xscreensaver, but I have checked how it is on LXDE. There the
lxde-common or lubuntu-default-settings packages provide autostart
files which have hardcoded the invocation of "xscreensaver
-no-splash". They could instead call their own little wrappers that
set the newLoginCommand resource.

XFCE and LXDE, which do not have any New Login possibility, could
simply set the resource to null. A shell script can do this with:
echo "XScreenSaver.newLoginCommand: " | xrdb -merge

(I don't think xscreensaver has any other, more elegant way to be
handed X resources. Some X applications have for instance a -xrm
option to be handed resources directly.)

However, the correct thing to do for xscreensaver in the future would
be to default to an empty newLoginCommand resource so that XFCE and
LXDE do not need to reset it. Those environments that offer New Login
(KDE, Gnome) should themselves set it to gdmflexiserver or whatever.
Well, Gnome has its own screensaver daemon so they will not care, so
it will be up to the users installing xscreensaver there to set the
newLoginCommand resource when they start xscreensaver.

But before we do this change in xscreensaver, we must ensure KDE etc
have been fixed first.
#304406#44
Date:
2012-02-18 23:40:18 UTC
From:
To:
I realize that I have been thinking totally backwards in trying to
solve this. Instead of xscreensaver trying to second guess how it has
been started and in which environment and figure out which commands it
should run, those session managers etc that launch xscreensaver should
rather tell xscreensaver if they provide a newLoginCommand in their
environment and what command that should be.

I haven't got any answer to my request above about how XFCE starts
xscreensaver, but I have checked how it is on LXDE. There the
lxde-common or lubuntu-default-settings packages provide autostart
files which have hardcoded the invocation of "xscreensaver
-no-splash". They could instead call their own little wrappers that
set the newLoginCommand resource.

XFCE and LXDE, which do not have any New Login possibility, could
simply set the resource to null. A shell script can do this with:
echo "XScreenSaver.newLoginCommand: " | xrdb -merge

(I don't think xscreensaver has any other, more elegant way to be
handed X resources. Some X applications have for instance a -xrm
option to be handed resources directly.)

However, the correct thing to do for xscreensaver in the future would
be to default to an empty newLoginCommand resource so that XFCE and
LXDE do not need to reset it. Those environments that offer New Login
(KDE, Gnome) should themselves set it to gdmflexiserver or whatever.
Well, Gnome has its own screensaver daemon so they will not care, so
it will be up to the users installing xscreensaver there to set the
newLoginCommand resource when they start xscreensaver.

But before we do this change in xscreensaver, we must ensure KDE etc
have been fixed first.
#304406#49
Date:
2013-05-29 06:11:38 UTC
From:
To:
Hi everyone!

I've done some search and here is my simple script for new login functionality:

------------------------
#!/bin/bash
# Issue a "new login" command for currently running login manager.
# ...assuming there can be only one.
pidof lightdm &> /dev/null && dm-tool switch-to-greeter
pidof lxdm &> /dev/null && lxdm -c USER_SWITCH
pidof gdm &> /dev/null && gdmflexiserver
pidof kdm &> /dev/null && kdmctl reserve
------------------------

Tested with lightdm, although you have to enter password both in lightdm and xscreensaver to return to your session without VT switch. But that's better than nothing.

Maybe this bug should be merged with #499909.
#304406#54
Date:
2015-07-21 20:00:53 UTC
From:
To:
xscreensaver ships a xscreensaver-wrapper.sh that detects gdm, lightdm
and kdm. So we just need the desktop environments to use this wrapper
instead of calling xscreensaver-daemon directly, then we can remove
the gdmflexiserver default for newLoginCommand. However I don't know
what the status is in KDE, Gnome, Mate or LXDE/XFCE. Or if they don't
call xscreensaver-daemon at all, and leave that to any user who
installs it.
#304406#57
Date:
2015-07-21 20:00:53 UTC
From:
To:
xscreensaver ships a xscreensaver-wrapper.sh that detects gdm, lightdm
and kdm. So we just need the desktop environments to use this wrapper
instead of calling xscreensaver-daemon directly, then we can remove
the gdmflexiserver default for newLoginCommand. However I don't know
what the status is in KDE, Gnome, Mate or LXDE/XFCE. Or if they don't
call xscreensaver-daemon at all, and leave that to any user who
installs it.
#304406#62
Date:
2015-12-25 11:10:41 UTC
From:
To:
In gdm3 package, there is a /etc/gdm3/Xsession script, and in sddm
package, there's a /etc/sddm/Xsession script too. I didn't look for
other DMs though.

Maybe those scripts could be good place to add code such as:

xrdb -merge << EOF
*.newLoginCommand: /usr/bin/gdmflexiserver
EOF

... and replacing with the appropriate command for the DM we're
editing. The right script would be run by its DM, then xscreensaver is
started in the user session, with the right newLoginCommand resource.
Am I missing something?