gdm3 doesn't remember last session

[Dan MacDonald]

gdm3 under Ubuntu 18.04 amd64 doesn't save/restore the last session you logged into, instead it always reverts to GNOME (that's the case if you have GNOME installed at least). If you want to use any other desktop it has to be manually chosen from the session menu every time you login.

It should be noted that I use pbis-open (PowerBroker Identity Service) for AD authentication, because its a work machine, hence the first two lines of my /etc/nsswitch.conf look like:

passwd: compat systemd lsass
group: compat systemd lsass

and my login/username looks like:

domain\user

ie With a backslash in the middle.

If this is not a bug and gdm3 isn't supposed to default to using your last used session/desktop, how do I force gdm3 to default to MATE instead of GNOME?

Thanks

[Dan MacDonald (allcoms)]

On closer inspection, gdm3 does remember both my user and last chosen session/desktop when I log out of X but it fails to recall my user and session if I reboot or shutdown.

I'm under the impression that gdm3 saves session per user so maybe this bug should've really been titled something more like "gdm3 doesn't remember domain users or their sessions after rebooting"?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, I can't confirm the issue on a new bionic installation
- log into the normal session
- log out
- click of the session selector, 'ubuntu' is selected, pick 'ubuntu wayland'
- log in
- reboot from the top right indicator
- select the same user and click on the session selector
-> the wayland session is still selected

Could you include your journalctl log from the session having the issue? Best if you enable debug in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf and reboot so it includes more details

When you log into the other session can you look what XSession is included in /var/lib/AccountsService/users/<username>?

[Dan MacDonald (allcoms)]

Hi Sebastien

As I said in my last comment, the problem only occurs after rebooting or after shutdown and so all I can really show you are the results after a normal gdm3 boot (with debug enabled), I think?

Here's the AccountsService details, my journalctl dump is attached

# cat /var/lib/AccountsService/users/ISDADS\\sgs548
[com.canonical.indicator.sound.AccountsService]
PlayerName=''
Timestamp=0
Title=''
Artist=''
Album=''
ArtUrl=''
PlayerIcon=<('themed', <['application-default-icon', 'application-default', 'application']>)>

[User]
XSession=mate
SystemAccount=false