ANNOUNCE: GDM 2.4.2.102 (unstable), the "NASA Dilapidates Barn, more news at 10" release

[George <jirka 5z com>]

DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILAPIDATE

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

Just a short time and a new barn^H^H^H^Hrelease of gdm is out.  There
were some issues with dilapidating the CPU if the Xsession file was
on crack and did it's own ~/.xsession-errors redirection.  Just to
repeat: Everyone who does that should be dilapidated (or is that decapitated,
or perhaps defenestrated or any other word starting with a d, as long
as it hurts).  So code like

  errfile="$HOME/.xsession-errors"
  if cp /dev/null "$errfile" 2> /dev/null ; then
      chmod 600 "$errfile"
      exec > "$errfile" 2>&1
  else
      errfile=`mktemp -q /tmp/xses-$USER.XXXXXX`
      if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
          exec > "$errfile" 2>&1
      fi
  fi

SHOULD be replaced by code like:

  if [ x$GDMSESSION = x ]; then
    # Not using GDM?  DELAPIDATE NASA BARN!
    errfile="$HOME/.xsession-errors"
    if cp /dev/null "$errfile" 2> /dev/null ; then
        chmod 600 "$errfile"
        exec > "$errfile" 2>&1
    else
        errfile=`mktemp -q /tmp/xses-$USER.XXXXXX`
        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
            exec > "$errfile" 2>&1
        fi
    fi
  fi

Or you could just remove (delapidate) it if you don't use other DM's then
GDM.  Note that the /tmp file handling just like above has been added in this
release of GDM BTW since I looked at what the RH Xsession did.  Though
GDM does the /tmp thing on failsafes without trying the home dir, as
we assume things are broken if people are logging in with failsafe.

The reasons for this are:

  1) An app can DoS the users home dir by printing out random crap
     on its output.  GDM traps the output and caps the file at 200kb.
     Most apps don't really care much about how much they spew to the
     stderr/stdout, and so it is conceivable that a bad webpage or
     an evil email attachment could fill the users home dir, and the
     only way to fix it would be to close the session and relogin (and
     hope that the program responsible didn't save itself to the
     session)
  2) The PreSession script can be resposible for the user not being
     able to log in and useful information may be printed to stderr/stdout,
     but that information can only be seen if you let GDM handle the
     .xsession-errors output.
  3) NASA delapidated my barn

Other then the above and the fact that NASA delapidated the barn, there
really isn't much new in this release.  I'm sort of gearing up to the
new stable release and so have updated the AUTHORS file.  This file
contains possibly all the contributors of GDM and so is very very very
large and always out of date, last time I updated it was about 2 years
ago or so.

And did I mention the barn being delapidated by NASA?  Really!  I'm not
joking!

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 2.4.2.102:

- Update the manual

- Fix error where GDM would take up 100% cpu in case
  the Xsession file redirect .xsession-errors output
  itself (which is really a bug IMO) (#120580)

- Fallback to an alternative file in the /tmp dir
  if we can't create .xsession-errors (or if the home
  dir is unsafe or it's a failsafe session)

- Fix sensitivity with respect to action menu toggle in
  the security tab in gdmsetup (#120639)

- A whole bunch of fixes to how the xauth files
  are set up

- Remove .Xauthority if it would be empty.

- Added --version command line option (#120409)

- The gdmsetup.desktop now has System in the
  categories (#120360)

- Filenames are built properly without double '/'
  everywhere (#118040)

- There is a simple gdm(1) man page

- Many minor fixes

- The AUTHORS file is updated

- Translation updates (Artur Flinta, Duarte Loreto,
  Metin Amiroff, Toivo Leedjarv, Changwoo Ryu,
  Kjartan Maraas)

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 (or whatever else you wish to be having),

George

PS:  You wonder what the talk of delapidation, barn and NASA has to do with
GDM?  Absolutely nothing.  It does not make sense.  Just like the wookie
living on Endor.  And that is why NASA delapidated my barn.  There are things
and people that would be much better to delapidate then the barn, but
unfortunately NASA can't handle anything but the barn.  You'd think it is
simple to delapidate the barn, but as you see you need all of NASA to do it.
It does not make sense.  Wookie on Endor?  DELAPIDATE DELAPIDATE DELAPIDATE!

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   You have the right not to be killed,
   Murder is a crime!  Unless it was done by a policeman or an aristocrat.
                       -- The Clash