[pkg-fso-maint] Bug#703336: Race condition when other display managers are present

[Enrico Zini]

Package: nodm
Severity: normal

Hello,

Joona Manner writes:

> I did notice that if you have installed normal Ubuntu package with
> Gnome, you must disable lightdm loading on background while starting
> NODM.
> 
> - to do this you just have to create a new file:
> 
>  /etc/init/lightdm.override
> 
> - and type in it:
> 
> manual
> 
> - and reboot the computer after that.
> 
> If gnome graphic interface is loaded on background when user wants to
> use e.g. NODM and Openbox instead of Gnome, loading lightdm (Gnome
> graphic +login interface) makes starting NODM totally random. NODM
> seems to be starting e.g. 5 times in a row ok, but then suddenly it
> ends up into +Gnome login window. No matter how much timeout is set to
> NODM.
> 
> After doing that lightdm.override, I did test NODM and it started
> perfectly over 50 times in a row and is still starting perfectly every
> time. I +did also adjust timeout to be 120 seconds but the it did not
> have any effect before doing that lightdm.override.
> 
> Since I found some other users struggling with this, I hope that you
> can put this info to your NODM page.

although I would not know how to prevent the race condition of two
display managers trying to start at the same time, this behaviour should
be documented.


Enrico


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash