I run my OpenSuSE machines with either KDE3 or Trinity desktops. After installing Leap 42.2 recently, I am unable to get KDM to run, and there does not seem to be any way to customize SDDM (to prevent it displaying login IDs) or to replace it, either. I’m guessing that its binary is imbedded in the login process, even though it wasn’t installed as part of KDE4 or Plasma (which I didn’t install and don’t want).
I used the YaST /etc/sysconfig editor component to attempt to change the display manager to kdm, but that has no effect. How can I (preferably) replace SDDM with KDM, or at least configure SDDM so that it doesn’t display login ID information?
Okay, I tried again and was able to get SDDM installed without it pulling in all of the Plasma base. That gave me /etc/sddm.conf and its documentation. I added
and rebooted, but SDDM still displays the user names. I notice also that the [Theme] section says Current=maui, but the background being displayed is the OpenSuSE default with the lightbulb, so apparently the SDDM that’s installed is not referring to /etc/sddm.conf at all.
KDM is the Display Manager component of KDE (3 or 4, and maybe Plasma), and as such is installed when as part of the desktop. Yes, it’s installed. Yes, I used YaST to change **/etc/sysconfig/displaymanager **to use kdm. But SDDM is what shows up at login time, and it doesn’t seem to be reading /etc/sddm.conf.
**# cat /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager**
## Type: string(Xorg)
## Path: Desktop/Display manager
## Default: "Xorg"
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_XSERVER="Xorg"
## Path: Desktop/Display manager
## Description: settings to generate a proper displaymanager config
## Type: string(kdm,xdm,gdm,wdm,entrance,console,lightdm,sddm)
## Default: ""
#
# Here you can set the default Display manager (kdm/xdm/gdm/wdm/entrance/console).
# all changes in this file require a restart of the displaymanager
#
**DISPLAYMANAGER="kdm"**
## Type: yesno
## Default: no
#
# Allow remote access (XDMCP) to your display manager (xdm/kdm/gdm). Please note
# that a modified kdm or xdm configuration, e.g. by KDE control center
# will not be changed. For gdm, values will be updated after change.
# XDMCP service should run only on trusted networks and you have to disable
# firewall for interfaces, where you want to provide this service.
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_REMOTE_ACCESS="no"
## Type: yesno
## Default: no
#
# Allow remote access of the user root to your display manager. Note
# that root can never login if DISPLAYMANAGER_SHUTDOWN is "auto" and
# System/Security/Permissions/PERMISSION_SECURITY is "paranoid"
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_ROOT_LOGIN_REMOTE="no"
## Type: yesno
## Default: yes
#
# Let the displaymanager start a local Xserver.
# Set to "no" for remote-access only.
# Set to "no" on architectures without any Xserver (e.g. s390/s390x).
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_STARTS_XSERVER="yes"
## Type: yesno
## Default: no
#
# TCP port 6000 of Xserver. When set to "no" (default) Xserver is
# started with "-nolisten tcp". Only set this to "yes" if you really
# need to. Remote X service should run only on trusted networks and
# you have to disable firewall for interfaces, where you want to
# provide this service. Use ssh X11 port forwarding whenever possible.
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_XSERVER_TCP_PORT_6000_OPEN="no"
## Type: string
## Default:
#
# Define the user whom should get logged in without request. If string
# is empty, display standard login dialog.
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_AUTOLOGIN=""
## Type: yesno
## Default: no
#
# Allow all users to login without password, but ask for the user, if
# DISPLAYMANAGER_AUTOLOGIN is empty.
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_PASSWORD_LESS_LOGIN="no"
## Type: yesno
## Default: no
#
# Display a combobox for Active Directory domains.
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_AD_INTEGRATION="no"
## Type: list(root,all,none,auto)
## Default: auto
#
# Determine who will be able to shutdown or reboot the system in kdm. Valid
# values are: "root" (only root can shutdown), "all" (everybody can shutdown),
# "none" (nobody can shutdown from displaymanager), "auto" (follow
# System/Security/Permissions/PERMISSION_SECURITY to decide: "easy local" is
# equal to "all", everything else is equal to "root"). gdm respects the
# PolicyKit settings for ConsoleKit. Shutdown configuration can be done via
# the polkit-default-privs mechanism.
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_SHUTDOWN="auto"
## Path: Desktop/Display manager
## Description: settings to generate a proper displaymanager config
## Config: kdm
## Type: string
## Default:
#
# Defines extra Server Arguments given to the kdm display manager when
# starting a local display. Useful to override e.g. the -dpi setting.
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_LOCALARGS=""
## Type: yesno
## Default: yes
#
# Allow local access of the user root to your display manager. Note
# that root can never login if DISPLAYMANAGER_SHUTDOWN is "auto" and
# System/Security/Permissions/PERMISSION_SECURITY is "paranoid".
# This settings currently works only with KDM.
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_ROOT_LOGIN_LOCAL="yes"
Actually, “kdm” (the package name and the entry in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager) refers to the KDE4 version.
Of course it can be installed and used with KDE3 too, like any other DM. (but the config module is part of KDE4)
The KDE3 kdm is in the package kdebase3-kdm though (no idea about Trinity).
I’m not sure if that’s installed automatically if you install KDE3 (probably depends on how you install it anyway).
But you’d need to set DISPLAYMANAGER=“kdm3” in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager to use it.
From the folks at the OpenSuSE KDE3 mailing list, I found out that though the binary is named /opt/kde3/bin/kdm, the internal name that /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager needs is kdm3. This is not documented anywhere, but apparently we are just supposed to know it by instinct.
In any case, setting the value to kdm3 fixed my issue.
To choose kdm3 as the default session manager one needs to write DISPLAYMANAGER=“kdm3” line to the file /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager (this can be done with the Yast module etc/sysconfig tool Editor as well).
