gdm : no more list of users

[Christophe_deR]

On my tablet, kde and kdm have no touch keyboard working. So i use gdm and gnome .
Until last week, the gdm login sreen (greeter?) displayed a list of users and i just had to touch the user and then gdm would prompt me to type my password with a keyboard rising from the bottom of the screen.
And suddenly, maybe due to some update, the list of users has disappeared, and i have to type the name of the user i want to login each time i boot my tablet. That is a regression. How can i revert to the previous good situation ?

NB :I googled for hours to find a solution and it tells me to tweak/edit some /etc files ut it simply doesn’t work.

Thanks for your help…

[wolfi323]

@Christophe_deR

And suddenly, maybe due to some update, the list of users has disappeared, and i have to type the name of the user i want to login each time i boot my tablet. That is a regression. How can i revert to the previous good situation ?

Is your user id smaller than 1000 maybe? Check with “id”.

Your problem sounds like this: Access Denied

You might try to edit the file /var/lib/AccountsService/users/$USER to say:

SystemAccount=false

[Christophe_deR]

Yes, user number is < 1000 .
Editing the file /var/lib/AccountsService/users/$USER to say: SystemAccount=false

doesn’t solve the problem.

Shall i downgrade some package to come back to a normal situation ?

[wolfi323]

@Christophe_deR

Shall i downgrade some package to come back to a normal situation ?

You could try the packages mentioned in the bug report, and/or add a comment there. (same username/password as here)

Other than that, reverting the complete GNOME update should help of course (I’m not sure which packages are involved in this problem in particular, probably gdm and accountservice should suffice).
You could do that by choosing to show “All patches” in YaST->Online Update, selecting the GNOME update, and switching all packages back to the previous versions. Cannot think of an easier way at the moment, sorry.

[hcvv]

@Christophe_deR

Shall i downgrade some package to come back to a normal situation ?

As you never told which version you have (not even your oppenSUSE version) …

[Christophe_deR]

Sorry, it’s opensuse 13.1

[Christophe_deR]

Ok, i had to roll back to previous version for accountservice package and i had to edit /var/lib/AccountsService/users/$USER to say: SystemAccount=false, and i get back my users displayed on gdm login screen.
Thank you for your help and i hope a new version will come soon to solve the problem…

[wolfi323]

@Christophe_deR

Thank you for your help and i hope a new version will come soon to solve the problem…

Please, tell your experiences in the bug report.
Things like this don’t get fixed magically just by waiting…

Not everybody experiences this, as the the default user id is 1000 for a while now.

For example, I myself still am user 500, but I don’t really care (and haven’t noticed) as I don’t use neither gdm nor GNOME.
And kdm still shows my user fine…

[hcvv]

Same here. My users are from 500 upwards (that was a convention a long time ago), but I use kdm and switched off the list.

Thus when you want to be of help to users like you, report it.

[Christophe_deR]

Yes you’re right : we, old linux users ( i use linux since year 2000 . 14 years ! ) have user numbers like 500 .

Sorry, i had to wait this morning to do the bug report, because i was working during the night.

So it’s done, now.

[hcvv]

@Christophe_deR

Yes you’re right : we, old linux users ( i use linux since year 2000 . 14 years ! ) have user numbers like 500 .

This is still older. Most Unix version used the 500 mark already for years. rotfl!

@Christophe_deR

Sorry, i had to wait this morning to do the bug report, because i was working during the night.

So it’s done, now.

It is not a bad habit to post the llink to it here. Others may then add more information or weight to the bug.

[Christophe_deR]

And here is the link to my comment :
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=896602#c6

[hcvv]

Thanks. There is already another thread here about this. I posted there to point to this thread.

[taranakicathedral]

Same problem with lightdm + lightdm-gtk±greeter on OpenSUSE 13.1 + XFCE

and yes, my user id is 503, but this system was only installed in May.

Richard

[robin_listas]

On 2014-09-16 09:26, Christophe deR wrote:
>
> Yes you’re right : we, old linux users ( i use linux since year 2000 .
> 14 years ! ) have user numbers like 500 .

Not all. Many years ago I did a find and change all files with uid 500
something to 1000 something on all my disks and machines - except
backups on CD/DVD, obviously

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

[wolfi323]

@taranakicathedral

Same problem with lightdm + lightdm-gtk±greeter on OpenSUSE 13.1 + XFCE

Yes, lightdm uses the same accountservice as gdm.
Please add a comment to the bug report, so they see that more users are affected.

And maybe try the packages mentioned there, to see whether they fix the problem.
If nobody tests them, they won’t be released as update either.

and yes, my user id is 503, but this system was only installed in May.

The default user id is definitely 1000 since years.

Was this a fresh installation?
If this is the first user, it should have 500 anyway, not 503.

There is a configuration option somewhere in YaST (it’s stored in /etc/login.defs) to change the default user id for freshly created users. Maybe you changed that?

[hank_se]

@taranakicathedral

Same problem with lightdm + lightdm-gtk±greeter on OpenSUSE 13.1 + XFCE

and yes, my user id is 503, but this system was only installed in May.

Richard

There is a configuration file /etc/lightdm/users.conf, the default looks like this:

## User accounts configuration
#
# NOTE: If you have AccountsService installed on your system, then LightDM will
# use this instead and these settings will be ignored
#
# minimum-uid = Minimum UID required to be shown in greeter
# hidden-users = Users that are not shown to the user
# hidden-shells = Shells that indicate a user cannot login
#
[UserAccounts]
minimum-uid=1000
hidden-users=nobody
hidden-shells=/bin/false /sbin/nologin

Maybe you had a custom file that was overwritten by the update? But the best would be to change your user id’s, rather than changing that file, as that would be more future proof.

[wolfi323]

@hank_se

There is a configuration file /etc/lightdm/users.conf, the default looks like this:

Yes, and if you read the comment at the top of this file, you can see that changing the values there will have no effect:

## User accounts configuration
#
# NOTE: If you have AccountsService installed on your system, then LightDM will
# use this instead and these settings will be ignored
#
# minimum-uid = Minimum UID required to be shown in greeter
# hidden-users = Users that are not shown to the user
# hidden-shells = Shells that indicate a user cannot login
#
[UserAccounts]
minimum-uid=1000
hidden-users=nobody
hidden-shells=/bin/false /sbin/nologin

Maybe you had a custom file that was overwritten by the update?

Probably not, as those values are ignored anyway.
The “bug” is that accountservice ignores user ids below 1000 since the latest GNOME update.

[Christophe_deR]

So what about that bug. Is there a new acountservices update ? Does it work better ? No more regression ?

[wolfi323]

@Christophe_deR

So what about that bug. Is there a new acountservices update ? Does it work better ? No more regression ?

Well, you are subscribed to the bug report, no?

AFAIK there has not been an update yet, but testing packages are available.

And user accounts already changed to “SystemAccount=true” will probably never be “fixed” to be shown again by an update automatically, because it might have been set by the administrator on purpose.