2009-12-09

How to better fix the GDM "face browser" login issue

It's really not that hard. I went poking through the documentation for gdm-simple-greeter and found an option outlined called disable_user_list. It took me a bit to figure out how to disable the feature, and I broke gdm a bunch of times before googling it and finding a great post by [daten] on the Fedora forums that outlines it.

So first, if you followed my angrily-penned directions from last night, undo that with these steps:

In a terminal window, execute:
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm
(select gdm instead of xdm at the dialog box)


$ sudo /etc/init.d/xdm stop
(X11 will bail. Go ahead and login at the console prompt)

Continue as below, starting with the gconftool-2 command. You don't have to stop gdm, obviously. You can just start it.

If you didn't switch to xdm first...


Now, we can simply tell gdm to disable the user list with a lengthy gconftool-2 command. Make sure you scroll to see the whole thing:

$ sudo gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults --type bool --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list true

Log off. The change may not take effect until you stop and start gdm. If you still see the user list, press ctrl-alt-F1 to get to the console, log in and run the following commands:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

At that point, you should have a new, still squishy and pretty login screen without the face browser of doom.


FYI, "axon" wasn't filled in automatically, I had to type it. This is much better!

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