GDM Init/Default runs xrdb trying to merge a directory instead of a file

[Jim McQuillan]

Binary package hint: gdm

The Init script for GDM: /etc/gdm/Init/Default is looking to see if /etc/X11/Xresources is a file. If it is, it merges the entries in that file into the X server's resources.

Here's the problem code from /etc/gdm/Init/Default:

--------------------------------------------------------------
sysresources=/etc/X11/Xresources

# merge in defaults
if [ -f "$sysresources" ]; then
    xrdb -merge "$sysresources"
fi
--------------------------------------------------------------

The problem is, /etc/X11/Xresources is a directory. It contains a file called 'x11-common'.

So, the system Xresources never get merged.

The GDM Init/Default script should be modified to merge any files found in that directory, but I think the directory should be named with a '.d' suffix. IE, it should be: /etc/X11/Xresources.d

Then, the x11-common package should be modified to put it's "x11-common" resource file into the new /etc/X11/Xresources.d directory.

This would be similar to the way /etc/X11/Xsession.d is handled but we don't need to "source" the files, we need to "merge" them with xrdb.

I found this problem on Hardy, here's the output of lsb_release -rd:

root@tulip:/etc/X11# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04

The version of the gdm package is: 2.20.6-0ubuntu2

Also, I checked on an Edgy machine and the same problem existed there as well.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is still with the new gdm in karmic