Impossible to login when there are more than ~15 user accounts

[hamish]

Hi,

lightdm version 1.2.1-0ubuntu1.1 from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Server) with xubuntu-desktop installed.

It is not possible to use LightDM on a system with more that about 10-15 users. We happen to have many more than that, but it may be that even 8 users exceed the 1024 pixel height of a standard monitor? The list of names scrolls off the top and bottom of the screen and trying to move higher up or lower down with the arrow keys lets you adjust the selected user off-screen, but unless you have access to the passwd file and are good at counting there's no way to know who's highlighted once it's off screen. Also the password box is off the bottom of the screen, so even if you are lucky to have a name in the middle of the alphabet & so have your name show up on screen you have type your password blindly and press enter... The user name selector box needs a max height and a scroll bar.

EDID detection of the monitor in /etc/log/Xorg.0.log looks fine.

this is stopping us from deploying xubuntu across our organization. :-(

thanks,
Hamish

ps - related to, but not a duplicate of #1047140 "lightdm window manager selection overshoots physical screen size"

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

which greeter are you using? unity-greeter or lightdm-gtk-greeter?

[hamish (hamish-b)]

Robert wrote:
> which greeter are you using? unity-greeter or lightdm-gtk-greeter?

We're using lightdm-gtk-greeter 1.1.5-0ubuntu1.1.

The unity-greeter package is installed on the computer, but is not running.

I should mention that gdm in 12.04 has the same trouble (I assume due to parallel didn't-try-to-do-that-yet reasons). In production to get it to work I'm currently using kdm with gdm-emulatord with a hacked together custom login theme for our >60 users: that allows a scrollbar to work, and the gdm-emulatord sort of allows "Switch user" to work from the desktops, but that isn't fully already-logged-in aware, so I've had to pin a notice on the wall suggesting to randomly try Ctrl-Alt-F11 (etc) until you find a locked X server asking for your password. Not exactly ideal, but so far it's only running on the new systems that need a newer kernel/X drivers than 10.04 LTS provides.

Also, it's not clear to me: what controls if a login name is a single line tall, or if it gets (seemingly) a newline before and after it so 3 lines per name. Maybe that is reserving space for a NULL 60x60 avatar icon? If we could get that down to 1 line per user it would help mitigate the effects of the missing scrollbar.

happy to do an `adduser` script in a VM to demonstrate if you want screenshots..

thanks,
Hamish

[hamish (hamish-b)]

question answered..

[hamish (hamish-b)]

here is a bash snippet to run for easy tested. Observed in Debian/Wheezy too.
I'll attach a screenshot.

for i in `seq -f'%02.0f' 50` ; do
   adduser testuser_$i --disabled-password --gecos "Test user $i,,,"
done

for i in `seq -f'%02.0f' 50` ; do
   deluser --remove-home testuser_$i
done

thanks,
Hamish

[Simon Steinbeiß (ochosi)]

This issue has been tackled a long time ago, either 1.4 or 1.6 introduced a combobox for selecting the user. Hence marking this issue as fixed.

[hamish (hamish-b)]

But the situation remain broken in 12.04 LTS... a backport would be nice.

cheers