Change GDM3 to MDM?

[GeneC]

First of all I am Tracking SID.
With recent updates I noticed that GDM3 started looking real ugly and almost unreadable (light grey fonts on darker grey bakground).
I noticed in the Blog (starting at #59) http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1974 where Clem mentions that GDM3 may be replaced by MDM.

(MDM Below)


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I took the plunge and replaced GDM3 with MDM and am quite pleased.
I had to remove GDM3 for MDM to work.
You can make changes to MDM (I set autologin) with etc>mdm>mdm.conf

[tdockery97]

It does look nicer than GDM3. If I didn't use autologin exclusively I would definitely make the switch to MDM.

[GeneC]

td

I did make the change to auto login.

edit (as root)
etc>mdm>mdm.conf

and underneath
[daemon]
Add the next lines:

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AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=username

where username is your name

To stop auto login just change the true to false

[roger64]

Hi
I am a Cinnamon user on LMDE64. Tracking testing.
I use autologin on GDM3 and I would like to make the switch to MDM.

Are you speaking about this? http://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/mdm
I understand it's former GDM 2.2 going to be rebranded.

@GeneC

Could you just provide us with a little more info on how to perform the switch? Yes, first get rid of gdm3, but after, how to be sure that mdm will effectively replace it?

[tdockery97]

td

I did make the change to auto login.

edit (as root)
etc>mdm>mdm.conf

and underneath
[daemon]
Add the next lines:

Code: Select all

AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=username

where username is your name

To stop auto login just change the true to false

Yes, same thing I did in daemon.conf under GDM3.

[GeneC]

Hi
I am a Cinnamon user on LMDE64. Tracking testing.
I use autologin on GDM3 and I would like to make the switch to MDM.

Are you speaking about this? http://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/mdm
I understand it's former GDM 2.2 going to be rebranded.

@GeneC

Could you just provide us with a little more info on how to perform the switch? Yes, first get rid of gdm3, but after, how to be sure that mdm will effectively replace it?

Hi Roger.

Yes, same as in the link on Mint Community.

First, install MDM. I use synaptic.
EDIT:
Change that to first un-install GDM3!
(I just installed it again on another partition, and Synaptic would not install MDM with GDM3 installed. Returned an error message. If that happened to you, just un-intall GDM3 and MDM will continue the install).

During the install a pop-up will appear that will ask which dm you prefer. My choices were gdm3 or mdm (unless you have others installed as well). I chose mdm.



I forget if I had to re-boot to see the change.

I had auto-login set as I described. Boot-up was normal. I logged out, and there was my new MDM dm.
It was that easy.

Use at your own risk.
I always have a recent clone backup when I make these changes, just in case.

[roger64]

OK Thanks. I'll try it and report back.

I always have a recent clone backup when I make these changes, just in case.

Me too. Saint Clonezilla protects us.

[squeezy]

Just did the changeover to MDM. I really like the Mint login screen much better than the GDM3 login screen!

I had to remove GDM3 first before MDM would install, but I got an error saying GDM3 didn't process correctly. Now in Synaptic I have GDM3 listed under Not Installed (residual config). I'm tracking the wheezy repos. This is what happens when I try to remove it:

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(Reading database ... 170284 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing gdm3 ...
Purging configuration files for gdm3 ...
Removing user `Debian-gdm' ...
Warning: group `Debian-gdm' has no more members.
/usr/sbin/deluser: `/usr/sbin/userdel Debian-gdm' exited from signal 11. Exiting.
Could not remove Debian-gdm user.
/usr/sbin/delgroup: `Debian-gdm' still has `Debian-gdm' as their primary group!
Could not remove Debian-gdm group.
/usr/sbin/deluser: `/usr/sbin/userdel Debian-gdm' exited from signal 11. Exiting.
/usr/sbin/delgroup: `Debian-gdm' still has `Debian-gdm' as their primary group!
dpkg: error processing gdm3 (--purge):
 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 128
configured to not write apport reports
                                      Errors were encountered while processing:
 gdm3
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:

Is there a way to force the cleanup for GDM3? I manually removed the Debian-gdm group but still get this error.

MDM is working just fine though and looks terrific!

EDIT: Oops! I just looked in the Users and Groups app again and Debian-gdm is still there. It appeared gone when I deleted it last time but must not have really been removed.

[GeneC]

Squeezy

Sorry about that. I had edited my post to instruct to remove GDM3 first (I learned on a 2nd install)

Try cleaning out your cache with:

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sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoremove

Then refresh synaptic, and

Then re-try un-installing GDM3

[squeezy]

Nope, no luck Gene. I'm going to look through the apt-get commands to see if there's a flag to force it or something.

[squeezy]

Ha! A little search paid off

I opened an administrator session of Caja the went to the /var/lib/dpkg/info directory. There were two gdm3 files there. I deleted them and then went to Synaptic and was able to do the complete removal of the residual config for gdm3.

A clean system again

[GeneC]

Good!

GDM3 is perhaps not a big problem in Testing/UP's yet, but if the GDM3 update SID is a good example, then it will apply to all.
The screen was all but un-readable with the new theme.
(Butt-Ugly too).

[zerozero]

i tried it as well (looks really nice btw, not that i had any major problem with gdm3 but the recent updates/removals left me with no background just a solid blue color)

and this 1.0 version had a problem

Code: Select all

E: /var/cache/apt/archives/mdm_1.0.0_amd64.deb: trying to overwrite ‘/usr/share/pixmaps/nohost.png’, which is also in package gdm3 3.0.4-4

the removal of gdm3 was not necessary (as i see here and suggested in the blog)

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sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/mdm_1.0.0_amd64.deb

(in fact the issue is just a png)

after this i had to reconfigure the DM

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3

and follow the instructions

[GeneC]

'zz'

Yep, I thought it was odd that I had to remove GDM3. Both should have worked.
Go figure...

[zerozero]

yeahh, you only need one, but you can can have as many as you want installed

[roger64]

Hi

I erased the former message. Everything now is well on mdm. (lmde64 - testing)

1 - Suppress gdm3 (Synaptic)
2 - Install mdm (Synaptic). Install later (I used the terminal) : mint-mdm-themes
3 - reboot. Seeing the mdm screen as published. Select session, login as usual,.
4 - modify mdm.conf to enable automatic login

Never had a choice between gdm3 and mdm, but at any time I had only one display manager.
mdm looks simpler, does the job. Adopted.

Thank you for your infos

[xircon]

Installed and got dumped to a login prompt, edited:

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sudo nano /etc/X11/default-display-manager 

And went back to gdm3.

Can't get this to work. I also went the dpkg --force-overwrite way.

Any ideas? Will reboot and see if I can read the error messages, but they are a bit quicki

[wayne128]

Well,

I had the same issue as steve

install MDM, and uninstall gdm3,

boot to a terminal.

so I reinstall gmd3 and back to square one.

waiting for some tips

[zerozero]

hey steve hey wayne
if you are again in square one, try:

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apt install mdm mint-mdm-themes

it will for sure fail with

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E: /var/cache/apt/archives/mdm_1.0.0_amd64.deb: trying to overwrite ‘/usr/share/pixmaps/nohost.png’, which is also in package gdm3 3.0.4-4

so

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sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/mdm_1.0.0_amd64.deb

but after you have to reinstall mdm because it failed. (in the end of this part we have to make sure that mdm, mint-mdm-themes and gdm3 are installed).
now

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3

and choose mdm, but then i think you have to do also

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure mdm

and confirm.
let me know

[GeneC]

Yikes!

I must have done it at the right time. Perhaps some new upgrades (since I first installed it yesterday) are making things more difficult?
My first install just worked with no problem. The second failed, but I just un-installed GDM3 and that worked.

Thanks to 'zz' for figuring all that out.