ANNOUNCE: GDM 33686273 (2.2.3.1), the "Clear plastic bag" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK

Yet another release with an IP form version number.  All attempts to ping it
have, however, failed.  This release is mostly a release dedicated to my own
stupidity.  For many people 2.2.3 presented a dilemma, it only allowed them to
log in once.  Well, damn, it all worked nice and dandy for me here.  There are
a couple of other fixes and improvements in there too, so it would be good to
upgrade.  Good thing it was not a security flaw, in fact, it was a security
improvement, instead of allowing access to users who don't deserve it, it
denied access to people who did deserve it.  I plan to release the "super
secure" version soon, which will deny any login.  As an added benefit it will
mock the users and make fun of their hairstyle.

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:
=====

While 2.2.3.1 is not really a prime decomposition, it has the advantage of
being in form of an IP number.  I'm not sure of the exact advantage of that
fact is, but I'm planning to spend considerable research time on this problem.

Highlights of 2.2.3.1:

- file descriptor leaks and messups dealt with, making gdm2 work again
  on debian and probably others (Ryan Murray, me)

- Posibility of a "soft" restart, that is scheduling a restart when all logins
  end.  This is now possible from gdmconfig.

- A new "protocol" for the slave to talk to the daemon by way of a fifo.

- The spec file now schedules a soft restart on install (this will work only
  for upgrades from 2.2.3.1 to higher versions obviously)

- Handle the slave process crashing much more gracefully.  And be generally
  more thorough in killing our children.

- Killing an X server while running is no longer treated as an X crash by gdm

- Other cleanups and minor fixes

- Translation updates (Christian Rose, Ole Laursen, 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:
============

To waste your bandwidth to download this new 1.67megs of stinking dung, go to
(for the gnome.org site you might have to wait for your mirror to update, but
you may get better performance):

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/SRPMS/gdm/

(Note: I've also made an Alpha/Linux rpm, which is available at the 5z site)

Have fun,

George

PS:  Hope people have not gotten used to these PS notes on gdm releases.
Mostly because I'm running out of inspiration for them.  I have considered
delaying the release until I come up with something funny to say, but
finally decided that was perhaps not the best strategy.

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
   relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
                       -- Richard P. Feynman