Bug 597457

Summary:	gdm does not offer "default" or "failsafe" sessions
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6	Reporter:	Quentin Barnes <qbarnes>
Component:	gdm	Assignee:	jmccann
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	desktop-bugs <desktop-bugs>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	6.0	CC:	cschalle
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2010-06-07 17:56:10 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Quentin Barnes 2010-05-29 01:35:54 UTC

Description of problem:
At the gdm login screen after selecting a login account, down at
the bottom bar it presents possible sessions in a "Sessions" box.
Only two are presented, "GNOME" and "KDE".  Under RHEL5, "Default
System Session", "Failsafe terminal", and "Last session" were also
available.

In my environment, I have my ~/.dmrc file's "Session" variable
set to "default" because I run my own X login session.  With
RHEL6, it will not let me have this session and upon loggin in
will overwrite my ~/.dmrc file with "gnome".

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gdm-2.28.2-5.el6.x86_64

How reproducible:
100%


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to gdm login screen and select an account
2. Click on "Sessions" box at bottom of screen.
3.
  
Actual results:
Just "KDE" and "GNOME" are presented.

Expected results:
To be able to at least have "Default System Session" and "Failsafe
terminal", and "Last session" as with RHEL5 systems.

Additional info:
I worked around this gdm limitation by copying the file
/usr/share/gdm/BuiltInSessions/default.desktop from a RHEL5 file
system to same place on the RHEL6 file system.  Now I can at
least select "Default System Session" from gdm now and it
does the right thing -- "default" is passed as argument 1 to
/etc/X11/xinit/Xsession when it is started.

I don't know why default.desktop is missing from RHEL6. if under
this version of gdm there's a new way or different way now to select
or present "Default System Session" that I just don't know about,
please let me know.

Comment 2 RHEL Program Management 2010-06-07 16:07:50 UTC

This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux major release.  Product Management has requested further
review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux Major release.  This request is not yet committed for
inclusion.

Comment 3 jmccann 2010-06-07 17:56:10 UTC

This functionality, with the exception of Failsafe, is now provided by the xorg-x11-xinit-session package.  For Failsafe you can create a new desktop file to provide such a session.

Comment 4 Quentin Barnes 2010-06-07 18:13:36 UTC

Ah, the xorg-x11-xinit-session RPM is not part of the RHEL6 Beta release.  For a "Beta" release, it's not very functionally complete dropping hundreds of RPMs.

I hope Red Hat considers adding a package to restore the failsafe functionality.  It's used very infrequently, but is very helpful when it is needed.