meaning of parameters in Login Window in Linux Mint

[wpshooter]

Can anyone give me a plain English explanation of the:

Limit Session Output
and
Filter Session Output

Parameters which are found under options of the Login Windows functions ???

Should either or both of these be checked, unchecked and why ?

P.S. - I see the little messages that come up when you hold the cursor on them but they don't mean much to me.

Thanks.

[wpshooter]

Puzzled that no one seems to have knowledge as to what these parameters mean !!!

So looks like I am in the same boat as everyone else.

Have searched elsewhere and so far nothing.

[Moem]

I have no idea where to find these parameters. What is your desktop environment and version, and can you provide a screenshot?

[Cosmo.]

It sounds, as if mdm gets used as display manager. Both settings limit the amount of data, that get stored in ~/.session-errors (~ stands for the home of the current user). The first option limits the amount of error messages to about 200 kb (this makes about 2000 to 4000 lines). Without such a limit in some cases the file could get so big, that it fills the complete partition, this means, the system cannot process because of missing space). Only in special cases, when you really need more log data, you should turn if off. In this case you can with the second option filter the log, again to prevent that it grows too much.
Usually you do not need and you should not change the default settings (first on, second off).

BTW: The basic info can get read as tooltip, if you hover the options.

[wpshooter]

It sounds, as if mdm gets used as display manager. Both settings limit the amount of data, that get stored in ~/.session-errors (~ stands for the home of the current user). The first option limits the amount of error messages to about 200 kb (this makes about 2000 to 4000 lines). Without such a limit in some cases the file could get so big, that it fills the complete partition, this means, the system cannot process because of missing space). Only in special cases, when you really need more log data, you should turn if off. In this case you can with the second option filter the log, again to prevent that it grows too much.
Usually you do not need and you should not change the default settings (first on, second off).

BTW: The basic info can get read as tooltip, if you hover the options.

Thanks for your good plain English explanation.

P.S. - The reason I was asking about this is that on rare occasions when booting I will
get prompted to login even though I have my system installed / set for auto login.
I was wondering if somehow these parameters had something to do with that
strange / unexplained behavior of the login. This just seems to happen out of
the blue. Because I can reboot after this happens and wala the system goes
back to auto login just like before without me having to making any kind of change
to the login window parameters.

[Cosmo.]

What is your version of Mint and what is the desktop environment? If you don't know open a terminal and enter:

Code: Select all

inxi -Sz

Paste the output here.

I do a guess here: Either LM 18 or 18.1, right?

P. S. Thank you for the "good plain English explanation". English is not my primary language.

[wpshooter]

Using Mint 18.1 with all available updates applied, so in effect 18.3 Mate.

Thanks.

[Cosmo.]

By applying updates you do not upgrade Mint. In this case you are still with 18.1. If you would have shared with us the output of my command we would know it exactly.

But even if you have upgraded (via the edit menu in the Update Manager) you will still use the old display manager mdm and not lightdm. This change has to get done by yourself. mdm is known to be unreliable regarding auto-login in 18 & 18.1; a fix for this will most likely never see the light f the day.

But you can switch to lightdm as explained here.

[wpshooter]

Hmmmmmmmmmm, no I did know that the way all of this is handled had been changed.

As I had remembered on past versions of Linux Mint, if you kept all updates installed
you were in essence moving to the next sub version of that release, which actually
seems like a better alternative.

So, I am correctly understanding that if I install 18.3 from scratch, I will get along with
that install the new version of the lightDM ?

Thanks.

[JoeFootball]

So, I am correctly understanding that if I install 18.3 from scratch, I will get along with
that install the new version of the lightDM ?

Yes, LightDM was introduced with LM 18.2.

Joe

[Cosmo.]

As I had remembered on past versions of Linux Mint, if you kept all updates installed
you were in essence moving to the next sub version of that release, which actually
seems like a better alternative.

Your remembrance is fooling you. This was never the case for any Mint.

So, I am correctly understanding that if I install 18.3 from scratch, I will get along with
that install the new version of the lightDM ?

Yes, in a fresh install of 18.3 (or 18.2) you get lightdm automatically. Or as said you upgrade explicitly to 18.3 and switch to lightdm ad described in my link.

[wpshooter]

I am fairly sure that I was given advice somewhere on a forum in the past
that just keeping all updates applied would move from one sub version to
the next sub version but not sure if that was on Linux Mint or Ubuntu. I switched
from Ubuntu to Linux Mint Mate about 3 or 4 years ago, so maybe it was a
post regarding Ubuntu.

Thanks.

[Cosmo.]

I am fairly sure that I was given advice somewhere on a forum ...

Surely not in this official Mint forum. What others write is not under our control and the amount of written nonsense is known to be endless.

Situation is at now, that we - and also you - still don't know for sure, on which system you are. Time to execute the command from my first reply. Advices can be wrong, the inxi output not. (At least I cannot remember having ever seen a wrong inxi output.)