Session is not initialised properly when selecting non-default window manager

[Francis Giraldeau]

Binary package hint: ldm

Either by using LDM_SESSION in lts.conf or selecting within the ldm greeter the window manager to use, the session is not initialized properly. The reason is that Xsession is not executed, and many scripts in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ are not sourced. Usualy, the x-window-manager (kdestart) is exec'ed by Xsession. Actualy, the x-window-manager is launched directly.

Here is an example of the command line started on the server when using non-default KDE desktop :

/usr/bin/ssh -X -t -S /var/run/ldm_socket_vt7_10.145.3.230 -l demo 10.145.3.230 LTSP_CLIENT=10.145.1.17 LC_ALL=fr_CA.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=fr_CA.UTF-8 LANG=fr_CA.UTF-8 DISPLAY=10.145.1.17:6 PULSE_SERVER=tcp:10.145.1.17:4713 ESPEAKER=10.145.1.17:16001 /usr/bin/startkde ; /usr/sbin/ltspfsmounter all cleanup ; kill -1 ${PPID}

Xsession is not a standard script, so we should look to see how other distros are handling it. Under Ubuntu, saving the window manager in the home directory can be an option.

[Warren (warren-redhat-bugs)]

Currently ldm only launches a desktop session through the Xsession script if you
let it use the default desktop. If you manually pick a different session (like
/usr/bin/gnome-session) it will run it directly, bypassing important stuff that
happens in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d.

ldm must learn how to run all sessions through Xsession.

[Bug (bug-redhat-bugs)]

Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA.
More information and reason for this action is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

Xsession has the possibility to call the x-session-manager as option, since currently all participating distros (ubuntu,debian,gentoo, suse, fedora atm) use Xsession to start their desktops i dont see a reason to change that .... we discussed upstream to fix the call for custom sessions in general by prefixing the call to the binary with the Xsession script as it should be (so all Xsession.d scripts actually take effect) instead of calling things like gnome-session or startkde directly. this change will be in intrepid.

What do you mean by "saving the window manager in the home directory" ?

[Francis Giraldeau (francis-giraldeau)]

This is a feature request, it's not related to the actual bug. Sorry for the noise.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

i wasnt complaining :) but would still be curious what you meant by
"saving the window manager in the home directory" ...
do you want to copy the binary ?

[Francis Giraldeau (francis-giraldeau)]

Thanks for your interest. LDM doesn't save and use the last choice of the user. The user has to select at each login the window manager he wants if it's not the server's default. In contrast, GDM asks the user if he wants to make the selected window manager the default, or use it only once. The information is saved in ~/.dmrc. LDM could use the same file and behavior.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

right, thats exactly what's planned since aeons (with focus on the default language though, which ~/.dmrc can carry as well), but nobody came around to write an ldm rc.d script for it yet.

[Warren (warren-redhat-bugs)]

This was fixed a long time ago

[Ryan Niebur (ryan52)]

this was already fixed.

[gcc (chris+ubuntu-qwirx)]

Ryan, please could you be a bit more specific? Fixed in hardy updates, intrepid or later? Package and version that was fixed?

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

fixed in upstream commit 911, which was released in version 2.0.13

[Ryan Niebur (ryan52)]

this was fixed in version 1.0.13, so intrepid and later has it.

Thanks,
Ryan

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

intrepid shipped with version 2.0.14, so it was fixed in intrepid