Wrong session marked as selected in session dropdown on login screen

[Olivier Tilloy]

My usual session is "Ubuntu" (/usr/share/xsessions/ubuntu.desktop). When I reboot my machine, on the login screen if I click the cog icon to show the list of sessions available, a dot is displayed to the left of the first session in the list ("GNOME"), instead of "Ubuntu".

If I don't click on a session to change it, when I log in the session used is "Ubuntu" as expected, not "GNOME".

So the greeter fails to reflect which session is actually selected when first displaying the dropdown, but internally it doesn't mess up with session selection.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gdm3 3.26.2.1-2ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-32.35-generic 4.13.13
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-32-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.8-0ubuntu10
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Feb 14 16:00:38 2018
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-07-02 (591 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160420.1)
SourcePackage: gdm3
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-01-29 (16 days ago)

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Bug reported upstream: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793456

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Rstrode (rstrode)]

This reverts commit 572a19324b75cc1f1b2db4908e2d7c9f06e4e335.

It turns out we need this call for more than just the session type,
we also need to it to inform the greeter about the default session
to use.

[Rstrode (rstrode)]

Created attachment 368580
Revert "session: don't call gdm_session_defaults_changed from setup"

[Rstrode (rstrode)]

Attachment 368580 pushed as f4f7b69 - Revert "session: don't call gdm_session_defaults_changed from setup"

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Adding a gnome-session task just in case that could be part of the problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Rstrode (rstrode)]

*** Bug 793456 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Upstream thinks is fixed in gdm3 3.27.90 which we have in Ubuntu 18.04 now. Can you confirm?

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

Works properly to boot both the flashback w/metacity and GNOME Classic sessions now.

[AsciiWolf (asciiwolf)]

That's weird. Still the same issue on my Ubuntu 18.04 system when using gdm 3.27.90.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

I tested again this AM beginning with a fresh install of 20180227, applying updates, and then installing gnome-panel. During installation I chose to auto-login so after initially logging out and selecting flashback w/metacity I still booted the default DE.

But that was expected behavior based on prior testing of Bionic. So I rebooted, then tried logging out again and selecting flashback w/metacity and still I just get the default DE. Next I opened the Users window and turned auto-login off, rebooted and selected flashback w/metacity but still I just get the default DE.

Those initial results from last night were based on a slightly older install where I had been using lightdm with the unity greeter, but I purged lightdm and then autoremoved all leftover depends. Clearly that didn't give me a clean enough install to produce a reliable result.

Bottom line = it's not fixed.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

This may or may not be worth mentioning but the reason I totally purged lightdm was just using dpkg to change to gdm3 returns an error:

lance@lance-conroe:~$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3
[sudo] password for lance:
gdm.service is not active, cannot reload.
invoke-rc.d: initscript gdm3, action "reload" failed.

Of course I could also have run sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm and accomplished the same thing.

[Rstrode (rstrode)]

*** Bug 793948 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[AsciiWolf (asciiwolf)]

It looks like it is now even more broken. Selecting GNOME session sometimes log me into the Ubuntu session instead. Weird.

[AsciiWolf (asciiwolf)]

Seems to be fixed in Ubuntu 18.04.

[AsciiWolf (asciiwolf)]

Is this issue still happening? I think it was fixed in 18.04.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Yes the upstream bug link (I just fixed up) is showing it was fixed in gdm3 version 3.27.91, so before 18.04 was released.