Need better(-located) documentation on lightdm.conf

[Daniel Richard G.]

This is a wishlist item for LightDM in Oneiric.

There needs to be either a lightdm.conf(5) man page (with /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf referring to it in a comment), or /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf needs to look a lot more like the sample file currently in /usr/share/doc/lightdm/lightdm.conf. The sample conffile is good, but it's comparatively out of the way, and does not bring LightDM to the standard set by most other such packages.

[linuxgeoff (linuxgeoff)]

100% behind this request.

I spent hours searching for documentation to allow me to delay the default auto login to allow other users a chance, and then found this thread with the reference to the sample file. Agree that a man page or at least something in lightdm man page to refer to the sample file, is the way to go

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

For what it's worth, on Debian, /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf *is* the sample conffile. There's not even a copy in /usr/share/doc/lightdm/.

[Matt Fischer (mfisch)]

I was thinking about this some tonight and really the sample file provides as much info as you need and if we have a full manpage then likely it or the sample file will get out of whack with the code (or both). So really what I think is needed is a simple manpage that points to the sample conf file. To that end, I will attach a patch that does this.

[Matt Fischer (mfisch)]

I checked the packaging after this and it looks fine.

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

I'd rather have a complete lightdm.conf(5) man page, and no sample config file, than a stub man page plus the file. I don'

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

(wrong keypress, alas)

... don't see a good reason for the latter approach when most packages take the former.

Alternately, if documentation sync/staleness is a concern, the conffile and man page could be generated at build time from a common source file. I don't mind having the conffile, just the lack of a (complete) man page.

[Ville Ranki (ville-ranki)]

I'm trying to figure out how to edit xorg options with lightdm, and still haven't figured out. Better documentation is needed desperately.

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

Ville, you may want to have a look at bug 932988.

[Sean Kennedy (sean-worker)]

It is crazy that an LTS release was shipped with a new display manager (fine) whose configuration file is completely undocumented! (not fine)
Not only are the options not conveniently available as a man page (man lightdm.conf), but google can't find them anywhere either.
This is something that should be addressed in a dot release of 12.04, not left for 12.10 or beyond.

[Thomas Novin (thomasn80)]

In the /usr/share/doc/lightdm/lightdm.conf provided with Ubuntu 11.10, there is a chapter about VNC:

# VNC Server configuration
#
# enabled = True if VNC connections should be allowed
# port = TCP/IP port to listen for connections on
#
[VNCServer]
#enabled=false
#port=5900
#width=1024
#height=768
#depth=8

However, it does not say anything about that you need to manually install a matching VNC-server. This should be noted somewhere.

[Tim Bishop (tdb)]

At the very least the manual page, or the default /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, should reference the sample file. It took Google and this bug page for me to even realise it existed. Manual pages should not be overlooked.

[Andrés Tarallo (atarallo)]

Hi !!!!! I agree with all of you, a man page for lightdm.conf(5) is badly needed.

I'm developing a prototype desktop PC, based on Ubuntu 12:04 LTS. As part of the requirements we need to ask the username, prior the password. We don't want to show the list of availiable users. Finding the information, and figuring out what to search, was a real pain.

I'm going to write a little entry in my blog in order to keep the data in aplace that I can find it easily.

I'll be glad to help and contribute a manpage. But I need the full list of options.

[experimancer (experimancer)]

I added Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04) backports to this bug report too, because the default window manager configuration and its documention is, in my opinion, critital information to desktop users. Especially in Ubuntu LTS-releases careful attention should be paid to exact and complete documentation of new key features and solutions.

And if the fix is already committed to Oneric, - as it seems - I assume that the backport to Precise would be quite simple.

FYI; in another related bug report (#1044485, also about lightdm documentation) it seems that missing documentation is not considered important (or severe) enough to warrant backporting, ans if this is how things are, then we LTS users left with the only option to get the configutation information in some another (and more difficult + time consuming) way.

[Paddy Landau (paddy-landau)]

I am adding my request for this. A number of people (including me) have struggled to find out how to create a logout script. Although I have found a method, it does not work reliably. With documentation, it could be solved!

[Lars Noodén (larsnooden)]

The man page will be a lot of work and take a while to complete. Would it be possible to use this file as the default lightdm.conf?

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~lightdm-team/lightdm/trunk/view/head:/data/lightdm.conf

[Andrés Tarallo (atarallo)]

Hi !!!!

A snipett man page was added in the Bug.

I've changed job, so I'm not longer working on this problem. Maybe in
my spare time I can help.

2013/3/8 Lars Noodén <email address hidden>:
> The man page will be a lot of work and take a while to complete. Would
> it be possible to use this file as the default lightdm.conf?
>
> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~lightdm-
> team/lightdm/trunk/view/head:/data/lightdm.conf
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/883189
>
> Title:
> Need better(-located) documentation on lightdm.conf
>
> Status in Light Display Manager:
> Triaged
> Status in Precise Backports:
> New
>
> Bug description:
> This is a wishlist item for LightDM in Oneiric.
>
> There needs to be either a lightdm.conf(5) man page (with
> /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf referring to it in a comment), or
> /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf needs to look a lot more like the sample
> file currently in /usr/share/doc/lightdm/lightdm.conf. The sample
> conffile is good, but it's comparatively out of the way, and does not
> bring LightDM to the standard set by most other such packages.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/lightdm/+bug/883189/+subscriptions

[Jacob Nevins (0jacobnk-ulp)]

In addition to everything else said here, the relationship between /etc/lightdm.conf and the lightdm-set-defaults program needs clarifying.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LightDM#Configuration_and_Tweaks suggests that "[lightdm.conf is not] suppose to be directly edited, instead use: lightdm-set-defaults".

Is that actually true? On Precise at least, the program is not mentioned in lightdm(1) (where lightdm.conf is mentioned), nor in /etc/lightdm.conf, nor in /usr/share/doc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.gz. Also, the program doesn't have its own man page, and lives in /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults where it's not obvious to find. And according to its --help it only allow changing a small subset of the options mentioned in the example lightdm.conf.

That suggests to me that it's intended to be a helper progam for use by packages or GUI configuration tools. If so, and as a system administrator I'm expected to edit lightdm.conf directly, what rules do I have to follow to not clash with automatically made changes from lightdm-set-defaults?