Tries to run startlxde even if not installed

[Daniel Richard G.]

Binary package hint: lxdm

This concerns lxdm 0.2.0~svn2307+git20100209-0ubuntu2 in Lucid beta1.

I'm looking to use lxdm---sans any other LXDE components---in conjunction with the Xfce (Xubuntu) desktop environment. (The rationale being, I want to use something other than gdm, due to the heavy GNOME dependencies it has gained in recent times.)

If you log in with "Default" as the selected desktop/session, lxdm attempts to run startlxde(1), and tosses up an error (see attached) when this is not installed. This hardly seems like appropriate behavior when the LXDE literature claims "Desktop independent (suprise! Every component can be used without LXDE)".

The "Default" option should use whatever is specified in the user's ~/.dmrc file, as is already common practice among other display managers.

[Julien Lavergne (gilir)]

Thanks for your bug report.

There is 2 problem :
- lxdm is not really smart when you select Default, and most likely will fallback to LXDE, even if other session are available.
- There is no support of dmrc files.

The 2 was not really relative, except that the second can workaround the first.

[Julien Lavergne (gilir)]

Upstream add support to read .dmrc file : http://lxde.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=lxde/lxdm;a=commitdiff;h=796216ea47eb7a6c95b83a62bbd741f39125c15c

[Mike Miller (launchpad-mikeage)]

Is this related to the value in /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf of session=/usr/bin/startlxde ?

How does it know what the default is [on my hybrid lxdm / gnome system, the default, whatever it is, works just fine, except for the error]? Can it just be changed in this config file?

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

> Can it just be changed in this config file?

Potentially, if that were changed to something like /etc/X11/Xsession. The bug is that the "Default" session should map to something sensible, not an assumed LXDE session.

[Roman (thezub)]

Related to this bug, if you try to install the lxdm package at all it attempts to bring in all sorts of LXDE-dependencies. It'll install if you use -no-install-recommends but will produce the above error. If you do install it, along with recommends, it makes LXDE the default login environment.

[Daniel Richard G. (skunk)]

> Related to this bug, if you try to install the lxdm package at all it attempts to bring in all sorts of LXDE-dependencies.

That's certainly a consideration for Xubuntu, which is looking at lxdm as a potential replacement for "I depend on all of GNOME now!" gdm.

[Roman (thezub)]

> That's certainly a consideration for Xubuntu, which is looking at lxdm as a potential replacement for "I depend on all of GNOME now!" gdm.

Indeed. Especially given the fact that if you don't have some package installed that I've not yet figured out (maybe metacity?) you don't get a mouse cursor in GDM at all. So I'm hoping this bug has been fixed or gets fixed, it can be critical to lightweight computing.

[Roman (thezub)]

I can confirm that this bug is still present in the most recent version of LXDM from the PPA.

[Jonathan Marsden (jmarsden)]

dmrc support was added to lxdm in lxdm 0.3.0 .

Therefore, this support is now included in the lxdm package included in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty, currently lxdm-0.3.0-0ubuntu3

Setting to Fix released.