Release Digest: GNOME, July 24, 2003

Jul 25, 2003, 05:00 (0 Talkback[s])

GDM 2.4.2.98

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONGJMP

(If you have no clue what gdm is, skip a few paragraphs down first)

[For a stable version use version 2.4.1.4]

I actually wrote up some docs for this thing. Isn't that crazy. In any case I've updated the reference docs, added lots of new info and merged in the greeter theme document. So the GdmGreeterThemeManual.txt is gone now. The docs are standard gnome docbook/xml docs and are installed so that you can browse them through the GNOME help system under GNOME|System. They are also now on the web in both html and pdf format at the webpage (www.jirka.org/gdm.html)

Also of interest is that there are now two uses of setjmp/longjmp in the code and more are likely coming in the future. I've finally overcome my irrational fear of setjmp/longjmp and started using them. Some of the problems really weren't possible to solve without them with some weird fork hack. So now I can't mention any more that GDM is better then XDM because it doesn't use longjmp :)

More security kind of things were added in this release, for example we're now also very careful in the logdir, and the authority files are not readable by the gdm user after the session has started until the session ends. Also the on-disk-fifo is no longer used for slave<->daemon communication meaning the gdm user can cause less havoc with that as well.

Also lots of speed improvements. First of all the FIFO change makes things a bit snappier and there was also an overhaul of how many XOpenDisplay's we do which turns out took up a lot of time. The most significant improvment comes from fixing the server reinitialization which shaves off a few seconds from server reinit (and avoids some races as well).

There is even a new feature (which passed the release-team and I even didn't have to whine much) which makes it possible to have custom selectors on the graphical greeter. Look for the "listitem" tag in the theme documentation.

To solve the libart crash issue, I now require a new version of libart with that fixed (there's one more fix in the same code in CVS but I haven't seen that affect gdm).

And now for the standard part of the release announcement:

GDM is the GNOME Display Manager, it is the little proggie that runs in the background, runs your X sessions, presents you with a login box and then tells you to piss off because you forgot your password. It does pretty much everything that you would want to use xdm for, but doesn't involve as much crack. It doesn't use any code from xdm, and has a more paranoid and safer design overall. It also includes many features over xdm, the biggest one of which is that it is more user friendly, even if your X setup is failing. The goal is that users should never, ever have to use the command line to customize or troubleshoot gdm. It of course supports xdmcp, and in fact extends xdmcp a little bit in places where I thought xdm was lacking (but is still compatible with xdm's xdmcp).

News:

Highlights of 2.4.2.98:

DOCUMENTATION! We have documentation! I've updated the xml docs and they're installed so you can use the GNOME help browser to browse them under GNOME|System. Or you can view the HTML versions on the webpage (www.jirka.org/gdm.html)
Whack the GdmGreeterThemeManual.txt as it is now part of the xml documentation
Add mnemonics/keynav to a bunch of things and generally try to fix issues from the HIG bugs filed in bugzilla (partially fixes #117776, #117784, #117504
Add "listitem" tag to the graphical themes. This allows custom list widgets in the theme and then you can get the info in a PreSession script or whatnot.
The graphical greeter now scales down fonts on screens 800x600 and less, and scalles down fonts even more on screens 640x480 and less.
Remove the iconification of Standard greeter feature, it was broken and I didn't want to fix it, and it was weird anyway.
Internal messaging is now faster as we use an internal pipe instead of the FIFO file. Also reduces the damage gdm user can do
Don't XOpenDisplay so many times to make things run along a lot faster, and use XSetAuthority instead of XAUTHORITY env var internaly
The server reinit is now safer, doesn't fork an extra process and it's quite a bit faster
Justification of text in the graphical greeter is based on the anchor of the text
We're very careful about the log directory as well as the ServAuthDir
Fix a bunch of errors (mostly portability stuff) by looking at the FreeBSD cvs repository
The server authfile is now unreadable by the gdm user during a user sessions for security
Fixed #109331, by catching term/int/hup signals properly when inside the hanging gethostbyaddr/name
The name resolution stuff now caches the last result for 60 seconds
Get the name of the root user instead of assuming it's "root" (fixes #117527)
Fix hangs with the signal stuff by fixing the in_signal flag undercounts and redoing the waitpid mess in the slave by using a select call, and not doing that many things in the signal handlers. Also fixes a long delay when restarting the greeter
Fix configuration with --with-xinerama=no (#117895)
The standard greeter clock will now look much better with some themes.
An empty return will once again log you into the timed user as it did before I broke it
The Xsession now displays $0 in output (Steve Chaplin, #117898)
There is now a gdmtranslate libexec proggie that does what the gettext command does, so we get translations from scripts even on user systems (ones without developer kind of packages)
Fix gdmaskpass internationalization
Lots of random minor fixes
Translation updates (Artur Flinta, Vincent van Adrighem, Duarte Loreto, Pablo Gonzalo del Campo, Francisco Javier Fernandez, Hasbullah Bin Pit, Noor Azurah Anuar, Christian Neumair, Miloslav Trmac, Danilo Segan, Serbian team, Kang Jeong-Hee)

Note: GDM2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp@mkp.net>, and has for a while now been maintained by the Queen of England. She is usually not responsive to bug reports or feature requests. You can try to send them to me however.

Note2: If installing from the tarball do note that make install overwrites most of the setup files, all except gdm.conf. It will however save backups with the .orig extension first.

Note3: Note3 has been depracated ...

Downloading:

Webpage: http://www.jirka.org/gdm.html
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gdm/2.4/
ftp://ftp.5z.com/pub/gdm/

Sorry no RPMS. There is a spec file included in the tarball and it may or may not work (it should, and it did some time ago but I haven't tried it lately).

Have fun,

George

PS: I am planning to apply for a copyright on stupidity to which I have aquired license rights to when I bought Idiocy, Inc. I have revoked SCO's license to use and/or sell stupidity and am herby requiring they destroy all copies of said stupidity. Furthermore I will be announcing a plan to license run-only license of stupidity for current users for the low price of $10,000 per brain. This license is only for using your current stupidity and does not allow you to modify or even analize your stupidity as you would be infringing on my IP rights. I am now asking for 1 gazillion dollars of damages from SCO for lost revenue since stupidity is the primary mode of human activity ranging from SOHO use to large enterprise usage. Stupidity is used to run 98% of the world's corporations, which tops UNIX server usage by quite a bit.

--
George <jirka@5z.com>

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

Goethe

gnome-panel 2.3.4.1

Hey,

What is it ?

gnome-panel contains the GNOME panel which is the area on your desktop from which you can run applications and applets, and perform other tasks.

What's changed ?

gnome-panel 2.3.4.1

Panel
- Yet more excellant HIG work (Dennis Cranston)
- Fix typo between panel menu GConf keys (Mohamed El Ayouty)
- Fix crashing when cancelling the run dialog (Arvind)
- Make mnemonics in the Actions and Add to Panel menus invisible (Glynn, Mark)
- Fix positioning of the menu bar context menu (Glynn, Mark)
- Remove the KDE menu - should be done with vfolders now (George)
- Remove autohiding into the corner (Mark)
- Implement a properties dialog for drawers (Mark)
- Fix launchers and action buttons on vertical panels (Mark)
- Fix rectangular button widget on vertical panels (Mark)
- Fix issue with drawers being destroyed when creating a new panel (Mark)
- Fix drag and drop of launchers to drawers (Mark)
- Fix issue where drawer panel obscures drawer button when hidden (Mark)
- Fix warnings about "panel-stock-arrow-*" not found (Mark)
- Remove unnecessary dependancy on ORBit2 HEAD (Mark)
Misc
- Install icons into $(datadir)/pixmaps instead of $(datadir)/icons (Glynn)
Translators
- Changwoo Ryu (ko)
- Christian Neumair (de)
- Christian Rose (sv)
- Dafydd Harries (cy)
- Duarte Loreto (pt)
- Gil 'Dolfin' Osher (he)
- Gnome PL Team (pl)
- Kjartan Maraas (no)
- Mehmet TARIMCI (tr)
- Miloslav Trmac (cs)
- Pablo G. del Campo (es)
- Reinout van Schouwen (nl)