ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.2.5.1, the "Sexually Excited Platypus" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

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For those wondering what happened to version 2.2.5.0: it is simple:
I thought I would increase stability of the release by raising the
version number.  As it happens releases that end in .1 are usually
more stable then those that end in .0.  It's mostly a bug fix release
with a bit more of the usual crack-filled code sprinkled throughout.

IMPORTANT FOR SYSTEM INTEGRATORS: On a more serious note, there is one thing
that changes in this release.  I've changed how the XKeepsCrashing script
works.  It no longer takes any arguments.  XKeepsCrashingConfigurators
key is gone, it is replaced by a list inside the XKeepsCrashing script.
So if you've made any changes to that setup, you prolly want to check that
out instead of just rolling new packages.

You may also notice that a bunch of patches from distributions and such were
applied.  The biggest other thing is the final elimination of fork/sigchld
races, at least I think so.  Also if your X is crashing gdm will do a much
better job of detecting that.  X is really on crack and it's quite hard to
figure out what happened.

And now for the standard part of the release announcement:

Ahh, so you have no clue what gdm is?  Well if you've read this far ... let's
not get into that.  Gdm is GNOME Display Manager, the little daemon that lets
you log in to your computer.  It allows xdmcp multiple login displays,
selection of languages, multiple login sessions and generally is much cooler
then any xdm clone out there, mostly cuz it isn't an xdm clone to begin with.
I mean heck, it's even got a graphical configurator, so you don't have to use
the command line to hose your system anymore.

News:
=====

Highlights of 2.2.5.1:

- IMPORTANT: XKeepsCrashing now has different semantics,
  all the logic of crash recovery is no in this script including
  gettext and finding the configurator and all that.  So
  the script no longer takes any arguments.  If you have custom
  versions of this script you will have to change them to reflect
  this.  As a result of this XKeepsCrashingConfigurators is gone

- Skipped a version number for greater stability

- By default also look for XFdrake as a configurator on X crashes
  to work on mandrake out of the box

- pam setup is now the same as in the redhat and mandrake
  packages

- If the X server crashes within 5 seconds of telling us it's
  ready, still treat it as a crash, since things like inability
  to open mouse makes it die after it tells us it's OK

- XKeepsCrashing now handles inability to open mouse and
  offers to run mouseconfig (or if that's not available
  just the x configurator it finds)

- Fix crash on FreeBSD with setenv with NULL (just treat NULL
  as empty string) (Heath Nielson)

- DESTDIR fixes (Frodo Looijaard)

- gdmopen now sets VT_NUMBER env var for it's child

- Focus issues fixed in gdmwm (the windowmanager of the greeter)

- Check for existance of a home directory.  If it doesn't exist,
  the user has the option of canceling the login or logging in with
  the home dir set to root.

- Many MANY races fixed in handeling of extra processes.  Gdm should
  now always clean up after itself well if killed.  And it will
  now not screw up if the child processes die too quickly.

- Some configure.in and build fixes, require libglade explicitly in
  the configure script and also make console helper enabled by default
  if it's possible to use it

- gdmXnestchooser now has quite a few more modes of operation, in effect
  it can now be used as a generic Xnext launching program.  It also
  by default reads the Xnest command from gdm.conf
  
- Remove VerboseAuth configuration variable as it was utterly useless,
  and actually resulted in usability degradation when on.

- Include our own gdmmktemp like the mktemp program for shell scripts

- Fix stuff on console with gdmopen by printing \033(K onto the console
  before it does anything else

- Work with KDE face directories (username.png rather then username) as
  well (Mandrake)

- Accept keypad enter in the greeter (Mandrake)

- Run ssh-agent if it is found available and not yet running in the Gnome
  session file (Ximian)

- Errors from pam go into a separate dialog and information messages that
  come just before login are also in a dialog so that the user gets
  a chance to see them

- Use the pam wait time on errors, if available, this fixes a bug where
  the wait time was doubled because it was both the pam one and the
  gdm one.

- Make sure the cookie file is full of all different local addresses
  and don't whack out if the local hostname is not resolvable.  Also
  if we still can't start the server, tell the user rather then giving
  up quietly.

- Always print the "Please enter your username" message

- Translation updates (Ole Laursen, Stanislav Visnovsky, Christophe Merlet,
  Peteris Krisjanis, Artis Trops, Marius Andreiana, Christian Rose, 
  Zbigniew Chyla)

Note:  Gdm2 was originally written by Martin K. Petersen <mkp mkp net>, and
is now maintained by the Queen of England.  Although when she's not answering
her email, me or Lee Mellabone usually cover for her.

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

Note3:  Distributors, packagers.  Please, PLEASE use the standard Gnome script
when setting things up as gnome, or at least equivalently working scripts.  It
should never be OK to just exec gnome-session, that is considered bad form.
The script needs to read (if available) the ~/.gnomerc and otherwise read
the <sysconfdir>/gdm/gnomerc file.  This allows users and administrators to
setup custom startup for gnome.  Another thing is that if your distro
doesn't have gnome-core 1.4.0.3 or later you should probably disable the Gnome
Chooser stuff until that happens (you should update gnome-core anyway).  Third
thing is make sure to set up the X servers to run on the correct virtual
terminals if you start the gdm process before the other login thingies.  See
the end of the gdm.conf sample file.

Downloading:
============

ftp://ftp.5z.com/pub/gdm/
http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/stable/sources/gdm/
http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/stable/redhat/i386/gdm/
http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/stable/redhat/alpha/gdm/
http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/stable/redhat/SRPMS/gdm/

Have fun,

George

PS:  The other day I was in a pub, drinking beer, and had a revelation.  I
suddenly realized the reason why are we here.  The greatest question of
humanity and I've answered it.  For centuries philosophers have tried, yet
failed where I succeeded.  I was so happy I got another beer, and forgot it.

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
                       -- Napoleon