'who' command output and X logins

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1

Hello,

Does anybody know if with OpenSUSE 11.2 something changed in the way the users are logged in to X? I am running an application which uses notify-send command to send pop ups and it is not working properly, but it works in OpenSUSE 11.1, 11.0, 10.x, The same goes for SLED and SLES, all versions.

This is what I have found so far. Before the ‘who’ output was

$ foo@bar:~/Desktop> who
foo      :0           2010-01-26 14:40
foo      pts/0        2010-02-06 13:28 (:0.0)

Now it’s

$ foo@bar:~/Desktop> who
foo      tty7         2010-01-26 14:40 (:0)
foo      pts/0        2010-02-06 13:28 (:0.0)

Note that if I login with root everything is like it was before. Has something changed? Is there a way to change this like it was before?

Any help would be really appreciated.

TIA
Has something changed?

2

The command and arguments which start the X server are in the file /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc (for kdm) and in /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers (for xdm).
If you boot in runlevel 3 and start X with startx, does ‘who’ output look different?

3

Thanks for your reply. I am using gdm, I will try to find the command and arguments which start X server.

I booted in runlevel 3, login with my username, and typed ‘startx’. The ‘who’ output does look different, but not like the way I was hoping/expecting:

$ foo@bar:~/Desktop> who
foo      tty1         2010-02-09 13:35
foo      pts/0        2010-02-09 13:35 (:0.0)

Needless to say, popups are still not appearing.

4

Try to boot in runlevel 3 and start ‘kdm’ instead of ‘startx’.
Works with ‘gdm’ too (I just tried).

5

Tried, this is what I get:

root     tty1         Feb  9 14:16
foo      tty7         Feb  9 14:16 (:0)
foo      pts/0        Feb  9 14:17 (:0.0)

Still no progress though…

6

I am looking at the /etc/gdm directory, they must have changed some parameter in the gdm startup script…

7

There is not much to edit in the new gdm version.
But when I start either kdm or gdm, I get what you want.

root tty1  Feb 9 01:34
foo :0     Feb 9 04:56
foo  pts/0 Feb 9 04:56 (:0.0)
8

Indeed there aren’t many changes. I have even copied the whole directory from an OpenSUSE 11.1 installation, but I cannot manage to make it works. This is really weird.

9

Just out of curiosity, are you running the 64 bit or the 32 bit version?

10

This output is from a 32 bit version. But if you give me 5 minutes, I can reboot a 64 bit machine and start gdm. However I set up pretty much everything and run the same install on both.

11

Again, thank you very much for your help. I had time to do a fresh install again and I ran into the same issue. Then I was stubborn enough to perform another installation from scratch, this time choosing KDE instead of Gnome as preferred desktop environment… and bingo!

Now I have your same output. I am now adding Gnome and let you know how it goes.

12

I guess if you start Gnome from kdm, you will have the same output. On my systems (32 and 64), it works with gdm and kdm, but not with xdm and startx. I’m pretty sure it has to do with X start parameters ( tty7 is obviously vt7 ).

13

Exactly. I have installed Gnome, started it from kdm and it works. Now I am wondering where I can find these X startup parameters…

14

I told you: in /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc (for kdm) and in /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers (for xdm). In previous versions of gdm, you could define them in /etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf … but gdm has been totally rewritten from scratch and most settings vanished from the config files. I would assume it uses /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers since /etc/gdm/Xsession just executes /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession. (it’s easy to test: just add or remove one parameter in /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers). The new gdm version is a joke.