Unable to configure which users are shown in greeter

[Jeremy Nickurak]

Binary package hint: gdm

In previous releases of Ubuntu, gdm allowed administrators to select which users were listed in gdm's greeter. As of an upgrade to karmic, this is no longer the case.

I have a large number of users on this system, only a few of which are used frequently. I've always had gdm configured to list those ones only. This appears to not be an option anymore.

[NoOp (glgxg)]

There are multiple issues with Simple Greeter that do not abide by the gnome documentation:

http://library.gnome.org/admin/gdm/stable/configuration.html.en#greeterconfiguration
Amongst them (that I've tested):

o /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/banner_message_enable
o /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list
o /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/include
o /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/exclude

Perhaps /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/include will work for you (didn't for me).

[Richard Appleby (disposable01)]

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list 'true' certainly didn't have any affect on the face greeter for me under Karmic with the latest updates. It's extremely annoying, as I really want to be able to explicitly enter userid and password, not mess about with this annoying face greeter.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

did you restart gdm or the box?

[SabreWolfy (sabrewolfy)]

Agreed. It's irritating that a "new" feature like this is foisted upon us without an easy way to change it. Not to mention that listing all users compromises security. If I'd wanted a face greeter, I would have turned it on. I'm quite happy to type in my username. Grr!

[Joel Ebel (jbebel)]

I think the issue is that these options need to be set for the gdm user. Setting them using gconftool-2 or gconf-editor does not make the changes to the gdm user's gconf store. I even tried su gdm and running gconf-editor, but it's empty. The gdm user doen't have a store apparently, but depends only on the .gconf.defaults and .gconf.mandatory directories in /var/lib/gdm. By hand editing /var/lib/gdm/.gconf.defaults/%gconf-tree.xml I was able to disable the gdm face browser. This isn't an optimal solution, as it's prone to error.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you can use sudo -u gdm gconf-editor

[Joel Ebel (jbebel)]

gconf-editor still shows up empty. I'm guessing this is related to /var/lib/gdm/.gconf being empty. It seems to just use the values set in /var/log/gdm/.gconf.{defaults,mandatory} I don't see how one goes about adding values to an empty gconf-editor.

[Joel Allardyce (joel-allardyce)]

Figured out a way to make those gconf settings work, but still no way to set user list. The command to use is the following:

gksudo -u gdm dbus-launch gconf-editor

For some reason, I had to launch it twice, making the change to remove the user list each time, before it "remembered" the change. This might be related to using "close window" when closing gconf, instead of exit, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, log out and you will see that there is no longer a user list (but you still have to click on "log in as another user" to enter your user name and password).

Regarding adding users to the user list, the gdm manual (http://library.gnome.org/admin/gdm/2.28/gdm.html) implies that you can. The key is supposed to be: /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/include (string list). But this key does not exist, and adding it manually does not work (mentions that they key "has no schema"). It is also not listed in the default schema (/usr/share/gconf/gdm-simple-greeter.schemas).

In any case, enjoy.