unity greeter doesn't allow username to be selected

[Paul]

After an upgrade to unity-greeter_0.2.5-0ubuntu1, the display manager does not show a box in which I can type usernames; instead, only a button for "guest login" is shown, which logs in as a guest.

This is unacceptable, as there appears to be no way to log in as any existing user.

I have downgraded the package to unity-greeter_0.2.4-0ubuntu2 in order to resolve this issue.

[Paul (i41bktob-launchpad-net)]

There should be—or was, in 0.2.4—a button marked "other ...", above the guest login button; when pressed, this would permit a username to be entered, in the style of xdm and other display managers.

[Paul (i41bktob-launchpad-net)]

Problem still occurs after upgrade to unity-greeter version 0.2.5-0ubuntu2; downgrade to 0.2.4 required to regain "Other..." text in order to be able to log in as a non-guest user.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

The manual login box is intentionally not displayed by default. There are two things that will make it appear:

1) If no other (non-guest) users being listed, it will appear
2) If "greeter-show-manual-login = True" is set in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf, it will appear

Does that match what you're seeing? i.e. can you enable it again by setting that key?

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Should be:
greeter-show-manual-login = true
(case sensitive)

[Paul (i41bktob-launchpad-net)]

Yes, setting greeter-show-manual-login=true re-enables the ability to select other users. My problem arose because I had greeter-hide-users=true set from before the upgrade. These settings function independently and consistently, but that particular combination produces unexpected behaviour.

I ran a few test cases, and here are the results. The first two digits represent the status (0 = false, 1 = true, - = not present) of greeter_hide_users and greeter_show_manual_login, respectively:
 A. -, -: no username field, names showing
 B. 0, -: no username field, names showing
 C. 0, 0: no username field, names showing
 D. 0, 1: username field showing, names showing
 E. 1, -: no username field, no names (USERS CAN'T LOG IN)
 F. 1, 0: no username field, no names (USERS CAN'T LOG IN)
 G. 1, 1: username field showing, no names

It is concievable that someone may want both the users and username field hidden, though I'm not sure this is the best way to achieve that outcome.

Problematically, a configuration that worked previously stops working completely by default after the user upgrades to Precise, and the solution is undocumented because the parameter required to fix it is missing from the config file. I suggest the installation script overwrite /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf; the user will be prompted if their version differs from the "canonical" version, and all will be well with the world.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Brian L (bluke)]

Experienced this issue after upgrading from 10.04 to 12.04