[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#818152: Bug#818152: lightdm: can no longer manage multiple X servers

[Christian Pernegger]

2016-03-14 17:20 GMT+01:00 Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac at debian.org>:
> First you should try to investigate whether it's possible to port your setup
> to logind.

I've found an ugly workaround:

1) Start the Xvnc instances standalone (e.g.via systemd).

2) Add lightdm to them using "dm-tool add-local-x-seat".
This way lightdm doesn't manage the display but at least provides a
greeter and working login. The only problem is that lightdm won't
restart by itself once the session exits and there's no way to tell
systemd to restart it because it can't track the added seat.

3) Enable the session-cleanup-script and add another "local-x-seat" on
the same display there.
The result works more or less, but there's no session tracking in
logind and I'm not sure if some session processes don't stick around.


> honestly I have the feeling you might be the only user of that feature

Google searches show that this kind of setup was quite popular until
2012 or so when some widespread distro changes invalidated the usual
recipies. I have no idea how people realise that use-case now. Until
recently I was happily using gdm2 on whatever stable was called ca.
2009 ^^.

Note that this isn't a lightdm problem, it affects all current dms as
far as I could find. My issue with lightdm is the documentation more
than the loss of functionality:
* It suggests that it can start multiple servers configured in
/etc/lightdm.conf (it can't, anymore).
* It documents dm-tool add-seat (which doesn't work anymore).
* The session cleanup script should run "when quitting a user
session", but it's also called when you change from the user to the
password field on the login screen (?!?).
(I should probably file these as separate bugs, but I don't have
enough time right now, sorry.)

Regards,
Christian