Change GDM3 to MDM?

[xircon]

@ZZ that is exactly what I did, but I retried and still get dumped to a login prompt.

[zerozero]

steve, did you reconfigure both gdm3 and mdm? can't recall, but i think i had to.

[wayne128]

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.

good tips GeneC..

have not tried zz's method yet.

waiting for steve success.. haha once in a while must have fun. and run in terminal mode..

[xircon]

Yup, twice. Also edited /etc/X11/default-display-manager as that is all that the reconfigure does.

[zerozero]

steve,
show me apt policy mdm

[xircon]

Only if you show me your's first

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 apt policy mdm
mdm:
  Installed: 1.0.0
  Candidate: 1.0.0
  Version table:
 *** 1.0.0 0
        700 http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.1.3-2 0
        500 http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages


[zerozero]

for a moment i thought that you had the middleman system installed (that second option in the policy)
http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/mdm

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apt policy mdm
mdm:
  Installed: 1.0.0
  Candidate: 1.0.0
  Version table:
 *** 1.0.0 0
        500 http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.1.3-2 0
        500 http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing/main amd64 Packages


i believe the naming has to change, but that is not important to this issue here

[roger64]

This is working for me (lmde64 - testing) but I had to use terminal to get mint-mdm-themes, before, I had mdm-themes...

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roger@lmde64 ~ $ apt policy mdm
mdm:
  Installé : 1.0.0
  Candidat : 1.0.0
 Table de version :
 *** 1.0.0 0
        700 http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.1.3-2 0
        500 http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming/ testing/main amd64 Packages
roger@lmde64 ~ $


[xircon]

Same here, but just will not work:

[wayne128]

well
look at mine
lmde2012grc wayne # apt-cache policy mdm
mdm:
Installed: 0.1.3-2
Candidate: 0.1.3-2

[GeneC]

gene@zordon:~$ apt-cache policy mdm
mdm:
Installed: 1.0.0
Candidate: 1.0.0
Version table:
*** 1.0.0 0
700 http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
0.1.3-2 0
500 http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages

Wayne

Looks like your getting yours from Debian, not Mint.

[wayne128]

Looks like your getting yours from Debian, not Mint.

you are right... I am tracking Debian Sid.
like zz said, I got middle man installed..

[zerozero]

I got middle man installed..

big OOPS

Yup, twice. Also edited /etc/X11/default-display-manager as that is all that the reconfigure does.

to this i presume

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/usr/sbin/mdm

i'm out of ideas then

anyway, it seems that we jumped ship a bit too early (as always ): mdm is given a bit of troubles

If you log out and log back in, you'll probably be on a different display. That's ok.. as long as you run applications in user mode. If you try to run them as root or using sudo, it will fail because you don't have the right to the display. To work around this, simply type "xhost +" to give root the rights to your display. Long-term, if this proves to be a usability problem and provided it's ok in regards to security, we might open the displays by default.

Sometimes the MATE session fails to theme itself properly and shows up with ugly looking panels and icons. This is due to a race condition with MDM and usually only happens in live mode. There are a number of workarounds for this. If it happens rarely, simply retheme the session by typing "mate-settings-daemon" and "killall caja". If the problem persists, you can add a "killall gnome-settings-daemon" and a "killall mate-settings-daemon" in the PreSession's default script for MDM. Alternatively you can switch to GDM3.

[xircon]

Lightdm sort of works, but it does not honour my mouse pointer theme cludge all of the time, so I get a black pointer for some things.

Which gtk3 theme are people using to avoid the horrible grey text problem? I am running aldabra, but it is not perfect for my needs.

[roger64]

.../...
anyway, it seems that we jumped ship a bit too early (as always ): mdm is given a bit of troubles.../...

LMDE64. My Mate session handles MDM very well and does not cough at all. Furthermore, I realize I have a " fenêtre de connexion" (connection window?) in gnome-control-center which provides an easy configuration on top of the usual mdm.conf, and the screen greeter mdm window



PS: I succeeded installing mdm on my second try only. It means that after the first failed try, I had to reinstall gdm3 using Synaptic.
To my surprise, Synaptic told me he had to install also:
- libdrm-nouveau1
- xerver-xephyr
- libgl1-mesa-dri
When I unistalled gdm3 the second time, Synaptic left these three items in place. I think I will get rid of them, because the third one is a very heavy chunk (90 mb) and I am using a NVIDIA dkms so I do not need anything related to nouveau kernel driver.

[anmys]

I am not facing any problem with mdm, but am curious to know the logic behind having the same name for two totally different packages. If one looks just at the ouput of apt-cache policy mdm, one can assume that the mint repo has the newer version.

Just my thoughts.

Regards.

[squeezy]

Hmmm, not having any problems with mdm here.

[toomuchcoffee]

Looks nicer that's for sure . I wonder if using it will give me problems down the road..

[elliotsagan]

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

Code: Select all

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

Hi! zerozero,
I was able to switch to MDM successfully following your step by step codes.. No hassles at all. Thank you very much for your help.
Regards
PS: I'm using i386 desktop now with Cinnamon as default

[zerozero]

I was able to switch to MDM successfully following your step by step codes.. No hassles at all. Thank you very much for your help.
Regards

glad i could be of help