[Solved] MDM Themes not Installing

[RobertLM78]

Edit 2: As of December 2012 MDM no longer uses specially crafted themes - GDM themes work directly now (In other words, this how-to is essentially obsolete, but I will leave it up just in case )

Edit: The How-To works suberbly, in the end and the word of warning about the glitch in renaming the file is very pertinent . Thank you viking,although the tar command you gave was backwards (shouldn't it be destination name then source), being in the terminal allowed me to see that the .desktop file was funky (MdmGreeterTheme.desktop.desktop) - I guess caja didn't catch that - it is best to rename .desktop files through the terminal.
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At any rate, I read this How-To, and tried what it said, then dragged and dropped the tarball into mdmsetup under the 'Local' tab, it asks if I want to install, I hit install, but then I'm getting a goofy message:
"Not a theme archive; File not a .tar.gz or tar archive"

when I know very well it is - I had just saved it as such .

I don't know if there is a connection, but when I choose the "+Add" option directly (instead of dragging and dropping) neither files appear in the open file list, and under the file type it has only an option for "Theme Archives". Is there some sort of extension for Archive manager, or what am I doing wrong?

Thank for reading

[viking777]

Did you carry out this before re-archiving the file?

rename the "GdmGreeterTheme.desktop" file to "MdmGreeterTheme.desktop"
open "MdmGreeterTheme.desktop" with a text editor and change "[GdmGreeterTheme]" to "[MdmGreeterTheme]"

Note: when renaming the .desktop file, it may automatically be renamed to "MdmGreeterTheme.desktop.desktop" - if that happens, use the terminal to rename it to "MdmGreeterTheme.desktop" (a single .desktop) using the "mv" command.

BTW I think this comes under the heading of 'Theming' so I have moved it there.

[RobertLM78]

Did you carry out this before re-archiving the file?

rename the "GdmGreeterTheme.desktop" file to "MdmGreeterTheme.desktop"
open "MdmGreeterTheme.desktop" with a text editor and change "[GdmGreeterTheme]" to "[MdmGreeterTheme]"

Note: when renaming the .desktop file, it may automatically be renamed to "MdmGreeterTheme.desktop.desktop" - if that happens, use the terminal to rename it to "MdmGreeterTheme.desktop" (a single .desktop) using the "mv" command.

BTW I think this comes under the heading of 'Theming' so I have moved it there.

Thank you viking for helping to place this more appropriately and for the reply. I did indeed make all the necessary changes, before I rearchived .
What about these "Theme Archives" ? Is mdmsetup just using that as an expression, or is there some sort of setting I'm missing in engrampa (archive manager)?

[viking777]

Well, since I have never even heard of 'engrampa', I wouldn't be able to tell you if your settings were correct or not, but maybe they aren't, so why don't you just recompress the GreeterTheme with tar instead:

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tar -czvf source file address/name    destination file address/name

I haven't the slightest idea if that will make any difference, but it doesn't cost you much to try.

BTW if the source or destination of the file is somewhere other than in your home folder stick

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sudo

in front of the command.