If you have no clue what GDM is, refer to the documentation links at the bottom of this announcement.
This version of GDM should work much better than 2.19.0. Many build problems were corrected, and several annoying bugs fixed that were introduced in the 2.19.0 release (now shutdown and reboot work from the GNOME panel, for example). Several new features have been implemented and many patches from the Debian builds are now upstream, thanks to Lo\357c Minier.
The 2.19.1 release is an unstable release of the GNOME Display Manager (GDM) program with the following bug fixes and improvements:
- Now GDM desktop files support the optional X-Gdm-XserverArgs extension to the desktop files installed to /usr/share/xsessions. This allows a desktop session file to specify additional Xserver flags to be used with the session. This could be useful to turn on special extensions needed for certain accessibility features, or to use sessions that require special Xserver flags or extensions, etc. Note that sessions that use this feature cause GDM to restart the Xserver after authentication. <Ron Yorston>
- Now gdmgreeter themes support a "background=[true|false]" element to be specified for any item tag. Items which have this tag set to true will be mapped to the root window after authentication. This way the background image to be displayed can be specified for the interim between authentication and when the session starts. (Frederic Crozat)
- Fix gdm_daemon_check_permissions so it resets the permissions of the ServAuthDir rather than LogDir. This bug was introduced into 2.19.0. (Brian Cameron)
- Correct handling of AlwaysLoginCurrentSession and DoubleLoginWarning so they work more sensibly. Previously they caused a silent login failure for non-migratable sessions (e.g. Xnest and XDMCP) if both were set to true. (Brian Cameron)
- When using PAM, if it receives a PAM_AUTHINFO_UNAVAIL message, it will display the default "authentication failed" message. This ensures that the error message is the same for invalid user and incorrect password, making it harder to tell whether an account is a valid one or not. (Lo\357c Minier)
- Avoid starting timed login timer if a username has already been entered. (Lo\357c Minier)
- Check for existance of a gdmgreeter theme before selecting a random theme. Skip over themes that don't exist on the system. (Lo\357c Minier)
- Fix a bug that was causing gdmflexiserver commands SET_LOGOUT_ACTION and SET_SAFE_LOGOUT action to not work. Also fix a bug that was causing the gdmflexiserver command UPDATE_CONFIG to return an incorrect return code. These issues were introduced in GDM 2.19.0. (Brian Cameron)
- Now used an unsigned character buffer in gdm_fdgetc because the GDM GUI sends the username/password data as utf8 and the daemon will interpret any character sent with its high bit set as EOF unless we use an unsigned buffer. This should improve support of usernames and passwords which contain non-ASCII characters. (Lo\357c Minier)
- This change should only affect Solaris users. Add support for ctrun, so that when running GDM as a svc service via svcadm(1M), subprocesses are run in a separate contract. This ensures that when programs in the user session crash, it doesn't cause a GDM restart. (Brian Cameron)
- Remove unused failsafe logic from the GDM Xsession script. For some time GDM has called failsafe directly from the daemon slave, so this code hasn't been used for some time. (Brian Cameron)
- Improvements to how GDM sets umask. (Peter Baumann)
- No longer unset MAIL when starting a user session, and set PWD before starting a user session. This fixes problems when the user's $HOME directory is a symlink. (Lo\357c Minier)
- Fix detection of Xserver so that it should work on Solaris, Debian and Ubuntu without needing to patch the code. (Brian Cameron, Lo\357c Minier)
- Documentation and manpage improvements (Brian Cameron, Lo\357c Minier)
- Several build fixes (Saleem Abdulrasool, Ed Catmur, Jens Granseuer).
- Translation updates (David Lodge, Kjartan Maraas, Christophe Merlet)
Note: GDM2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp@mkp.net>. Much work has been done on GDM2 by George Lebl; and Brian Cameron now currently shares maintainership duties with the Queen of England.
Note2: If installing from the tarball do note that make install overwrites most of the setup files, all except gdm.conf. It will however save backups with the .orig extension first.
#ifndef GDM_DISABLE_DEPRECATED
Note3: Note3 has been depracated ...
#endif /* GDM_DISABLE_DEPRECATED */
Downloading:
===========
Online Documentation - http://www.gnome.org/projects/gdm/
Latest Stable - http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gdm/2.18/
Latest Unstable - http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gdm/2.19/
Bug Reporting - http://bugzilla.gnome.org in the "gdm" category.
Have fun,
Brian
This version of GDM should work much better than 2.19.0. Many build problems were corrected, and several annoying bugs fixed that were introduced in the 2.19.0 release (now shutdown and reboot work from the GNOME panel, for example). Several new features have been implemented and many patches from the Debian builds are now upstream, thanks to Lo\357c Minier.
The 2.19.1 release is an unstable release of the GNOME Display Manager (GDM) program with the following bug fixes and improvements:
- Now GDM desktop files support the optional X-Gdm-XserverArgs extension to the desktop files installed to /usr/share/xsessions. This allows a desktop session file to specify additional Xserver flags to be used with the session. This could be useful to turn on special extensions needed for certain accessibility features, or to use sessions that require special Xserver flags or extensions, etc. Note that sessions that use this feature cause GDM to restart the Xserver after authentication. <Ron Yorston>
- Now gdmgreeter themes support a "background=[true|false]" element to be specified for any item tag. Items which have this tag set to true will be mapped to the root window after authentication. This way the background image to be displayed can be specified for the interim between authentication and when the session starts. (Frederic Crozat)
- Fix gdm_daemon_check_permissions so it resets the permissions of the ServAuthDir rather than LogDir. This bug was introduced into 2.19.0. (Brian Cameron)
- Correct handling of AlwaysLoginCurrentSession and DoubleLoginWarning so they work more sensibly. Previously they caused a silent login failure for non-migratable sessions (e.g. Xnest and XDMCP) if both were set to true. (Brian Cameron)
- When using PAM, if it receives a PAM_AUTHINFO_UNAVAIL message, it will display the default "authentication failed" message. This ensures that the error message is the same for invalid user and incorrect password, making it harder to tell whether an account is a valid one or not. (Lo\357c Minier)
- Avoid starting timed login timer if a username has already been entered. (Lo\357c Minier)
- Check for existance of a gdmgreeter theme before selecting a random theme. Skip over themes that don't exist on the system. (Lo\357c Minier)
- Fix a bug that was causing gdmflexiserver commands SET_LOGOUT_ACTION and SET_SAFE_LOGOUT action to not work. Also fix a bug that was causing the gdmflexiserver command UPDATE_CONFIG to return an incorrect return code. These issues were introduced in GDM 2.19.0. (Brian Cameron)
- Now used an unsigned character buffer in gdm_fdgetc because the GDM GUI sends the username/password data as utf8 and the daemon will interpret any character sent with its high bit set as EOF unless we use an unsigned buffer. This should improve support of usernames and passwords which contain non-ASCII characters. (Lo\357c Minier)
- This change should only affect Solaris users. Add support for ctrun, so that when running GDM as a svc service via svcadm(1M), subprocesses are run in a separate contract. This ensures that when programs in the user session crash, it doesn't cause a GDM restart. (Brian Cameron)
- Remove unused failsafe logic from the GDM Xsession script. For some time GDM has called failsafe directly from the daemon slave, so this code hasn't been used for some time. (Brian Cameron)
- Improvements to how GDM sets umask. (Peter Baumann)
- No longer unset MAIL when starting a user session, and set PWD before starting a user session. This fixes problems when the user's $HOME directory is a symlink. (Lo\357c Minier)
- Fix detection of Xserver so that it should work on Solaris, Debian and Ubuntu without needing to patch the code. (Brian Cameron, Lo\357c Minier)
- Documentation and manpage improvements (Brian Cameron, Lo\357c Minier)
- Several build fixes (Saleem Abdulrasool, Ed Catmur, Jens Granseuer).
- Translation updates (David Lodge, Kjartan Maraas, Christophe Merlet)
Note: GDM2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp@mkp.net>. Much work has been done on GDM2 by George Lebl; and Brian Cameron now currently shares maintainership duties with the Queen of England.
Note2: If installing from the tarball do note that make install overwrites most of the setup files, all except gdm.conf. It will however save backups with the .orig extension first.
#ifndef GDM_DISABLE_DEPRECATED
Note3: Note3 has been depracated ...
#endif /* GDM_DISABLE_DEPRECATED */
Downloading:
===========
Online Documentation - http://www.gnome.org/projects/gdm/
Latest Stable - http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gdm/2.18/
Latest Unstable - http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gdm/2.19/
Bug Reporting - http://bugzilla.gnome.org in the "gdm" category.
Have fun,
Brian
