Face browser empty after upgrade to jaunty

[Nick Colgan]

I had two users listed in gdm's face browser, but after upgrading to jaunty they disappeared, leaving the list empty.

Ubuntu: jaunty (9.04)
gdm: 2.20.10-0ubuntu2

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, what theme do you use?

[EricT (et-27)]

I had the same issue after my upgrade (same ubuntu and gdm versions as OP). I have tried with both the "Human list" theme and the "Happy GNOME with Browser" theme.
I also tried using both the "include all users from /etc/passwd" option and adding the users manually to the include list in the login window preferences, and no luck with either configuration.

[Matej Kenda (matejken)]

I also have this problem. It didn't happen immediately at upgrade to Jaunty, but later. It might be related to installing the "Peace" theme. Bug #268961 also mentions the theme "Peace".

[sim909 (srizzi)]

I also had the same problem, faces disappeared right after upgrading to Jaunty. I also had tried EricT's tricks, with no success. Yesterday I managed to make them reappear.

What I noticed was that in system -> administration -> login window -> local, although the human list theme with face browser was visible and selected, the "Style:" menu at the top was set to "Themed". I changed that to "Themed with face browser", and all (3) faces came back! Gone through a reboot now and faces are still there. Under Users, I have manually selected the users, and haven't tried going back to "Include all users from /etc/passwd".

It does seem strange to me that this should fix the problem, but it does, at least to me.

[EricT (et-27)]

sim909's trick also fixed the problem for me. Maybe this is more of a usability bug. It is rather counterintuitive to have menu options at the top for "Themed" and "Themed with face browser" and then to also have themes in the list of themes that are, e.g., "Human" and "Human with face browser" when the latter doesn't work unless the "Themed with face browser" option is available.
I haven't tried it, but what happens when the "Human" theme is selected, and the "Themed with face browser" option is selected. Does this combination have a face browser?
Also, was this behavior changed in the upgrade to Jaunty? I didn't install the "Peace" theme as Matej did, but now that I think about it, I did install the kubuntu-desktop after upgrading to jaunty, and I don't remember now whether the face browser behavior changed before or after installing kubuntu.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the confusing option is bug #215330 but there is no reason the configuration should have changed on upgrade

[sim909 (srizzi)]

Yes, that is definitely the bug, also filed upstream to the gnome bugzilla as Bug 548507 in August 2008, but unfortunately still no activity on it (not that it is in any way a serious bug)!

Regarding the upgrade, something surely happened when I upgraded from Intrepid to Jaunty, because I immediately noticed that the faces disappeared on the first boot, and I had not touched dgmsetup at all.