lightdm_greeter_get_autologin_user_hint returns NULL after autologin failure

[Dudeman Dave]

We use LDAP for managing users. For one particular setup, we wanted to use an LDAP user as the user for autologin of LightDM. This doesn't pose a problem unless autologin happens before the LDAP service is ready. If the LDAP service is not ready on the local machine, autologin can fail without a retry.

To get around this, we've created our own greeter which make multiple attempts at autologin until it is successful. While making our greeter, however, I noticed that after the initial autologin failure, lightdm_greeter_get_autologin_user_hint no longer returns the user specified in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf. This has forced use to read the config file ourselves.

Is there a reason why this value would be cleared out? Could it remain in memory for greeters that would like to retry login, like ours?

I've attached a Python greeter that provides just enough logging information to see the effects yourself. It requires python-gobject and gir1.2-lightdm-1 packages to run.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

What version of LightDM?

[Dudeman Dave (linuxluser)]

Sorry I didn't mention that in the initial description. I'm using 1.8.8, from Debian testing (Jessie). The package version is 1.8.8-1.