I’m using Tumbleweed with Gnome and GDM (3.20.1-3.2, x86_64).
My setup: user1 and user2, user1 is automatically logged in. If I go to “switch user”, my system basically only locks the screen. I’m prompted for user1’s login password. “Log in as another user” does not do anything.
The behavior I would expect is: After clicking “switch user”, I’m getting to the greeter with the list where I can choose the user.
However: when I disable automatic login it works like a charm. I can switch the user normally.
When I have automatic login enabled, I can switch the user by logging out. Since I then manually log in to either account, switch user works as expected.
My workaround is at the moment to ditch gdm for lightdm, with a shortcut that Alt+F2 allows me to execute dm-tool switch-to-user user{1,2}.
I would appreciate if someone knew a fix for this odd behavior.
Thanks, the_at
Hi and welcome to the OpenSUSE Forums! I occasionally noticed something similar on fast notebooks: maybe you are using an SSD?
Apparently on a fast booting system with autologin enabled the first user gets logged in before GDM and / or the Gnome shell finish their startup processes and something gets lost meanwhile. If this assumption is correct, those timing problems might depend on the HW in use, its relative speed etc., so I doubt that a general workaround (other than disabling autologin) is practical. Maybe a systemd expert (which I am not…) can figure out a different startup sequence that avoids this deadlock, possibly slowing down the whole boot process.
I didn’t investigate further, since I seldom if ever use autologin.
Thank you OrsoBruno for the suggestions (and the welcome). Indeed, I’m using a ssd and the startup is pretty quick. This being said, I also tried exchanging AutomaticLogin for TimedLogin with a three-second delay: the result was the same. I’m not able to switch users.
One thing I did realize was that when I’m manually logging in using gdm, the user session is created in tty2, while the gdm greeter is in tty7. When I autologin, the session is in tty7 and the gdm greeter is nowhere to be found.
I’m wondering if someone has the same problem? I’m considering filing a bug report upstream.
I don’t have the current Tumbleweed installed, but if it hasn’t changed its normal behaviour since June, with gdm 3.20 and gnome shell 3.20 the “normal” setup is GDM greeter on VT7 (permanently there…), first user on VT2, second user on VT3…
So, seeing the first user on VT7 and no permanent GDM greeter with autologin enabled is somewhat strange with Gnome 3.20.
Leap has a different setup, with Gnome 3.16 but gdm 3.14 (since gdm 3.16 and up don’t start Xorg as root and that crippled something). Even the current Leap 42.2 Alpha 3 shows Gnome 3.20 but still gdm 3.14 (for release compatibility, maybe).
With that setup it is normal to have the first user on VT7 and no “permanent” GDM Greeter; then second user on VT2 normally and so on… just like you see with Autologin enabled.
I’m no boot/login specialist, so I stop here; but please post the bugreport # if you file one, I might join for testing.