[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#762731: Bug#762731: lightdm: issues strange error message when requested to start but is non-default dm

[Yann Dirson]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 09:24:59PM +0200, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> On mer., 2014-09-24 at 21:17 +0200, Yann Dirson wrote:
> > kdm is the default dm here, and I just switched from systemd.  When
> > hunting various dm issues, I found that asking lightdm to start
> > results in the following unexpected error (it does start as expected
> > when set to be the default, however).  It should surely check the
> > default dm settings, like eg. xdm does, and does not even attempt to
> > start.
> 
> 
> Well, that's exactly what it's doing…

I'm not sure if you're saying that it does check the dm settings.  If
it's the case, then it looks like it causes the service start to error
out, causing systemd to retry to launch it, whereas it is a perfectly
legal situation for a dm to be disabled.  In that case, it is a change
from what we've been used to, and I'm not sure to see the advantages
of doing so.

I tried to lookup any policy information about display managers, but
could not find any.  That makes me even more curious about how the
collaboration among maintainers of dm packages is organized.

The only mildly-official page that is mildly relevant to how an admin
can deal with dm's (that I could find) is
https://wiki.debian.org/DisplayManager, and it does not say anything
on that matter either.