Login from client does not work with ltsp-pnp and mdm

[Dashamir Hoxha]

I am using LTSP-PNP and I am quite pleased with it (the very concept of it and how it works).
When I install Ubuntu-16.04 and follow the steps described in this article: http://dashohoxha.fs.al/ltsp-pnp/ everything works very well.

When I tried the same thing but starting from an installation of LinuxMint Xfce, the login from the client failed. I wondered what could be different between the two distros and I found out that LinuxMint Xfce uses MDM instead of LightDM. I replaced MDM by LightDM, rebuilt the client image and tried it again. This time login from the clients worked.

Now I wonder: what is wrong, why it does not work out of the box with LinuxMint Xfce? And more importantly, can it be fixed? Anyway, this is not a critical issue and I can find my way around it. But for a normal user (for example a teacher) it would be nice if it worked straight away.

Finally, I'd like to thank again the ltsp-pnp developers for the great job that they have done, because it makes LTSP easy for everybody.

[Vagrant Cascadian (vagrantc)]

On 2017-06-01, Dashamir Hoxha wrote:
> When I tried the same thing but starting from an installation of
> LinuxMint Xfce, the login from the client failed. I wondered what could
> be different between the two distros and I found out that LinuxMint Xfce
> uses MDM instead of LightDM. I replaced MDM by LightDM, rebuilt the
> client image and tried it again. This time login from the clients
> worked.

LTSP uses LDM by default... my hunch is that MDM isn't respecting
/etc/X11/default-display-manager configuration, which is what we use to
prevent the display manager from starting. LightDM respects
default-display-manager, and so doesn't start, which allows LDM to
start...

live well,
  vagrant

[Dashamir Hoxha (dashohoxha)]

On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 7:02 PM, Vagrant Cascadian <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> On 2017-06-01, Dashamir Hoxha wrote:
> > When I tried the same thing but starting from an installation of
> > LinuxMint Xfce, the login from the client failed. I wondered what could
> > be different between the two distros and I found out that LinuxMint Xfce
> > uses MDM instead of LightDM. I replaced MDM by LightDM, rebuilt the
> > client image and tried it again. This time login from the clients
> > worked.
>
> LTSP uses LDM by default... my hunch is that MDM isn't respecting
> /etc/X11/default-display-manager configuration, which is what we use to
> prevent the display manager from starting. LightDM respects
> default-display-manager, and so doesn't start, which allows LDM to
> start...
>

I remember now that indeed I got the MDM login screen on the clients,
instead of LDM screen. So, most probably you are right. Thanks for
the clarification.

It seems that it is a MDM bug instead of a LTSP one, so this one can be
closed.

[Alkis Georgopoulos (alkisg)]

Closing upon request of the reporter.