Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 110615
not able to change the greeter from gdm to kdm, variable in prefdm does not match the variable in /etc/sysconfig/desktop.
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:33 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031016 Description of problem: prefdm calls the $DISPLAYMANAGER from the /etc/sysconfig/desktop Part of the prefdm: preferred= if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/desktop ]; then . /etc/sysconfig/desktop if [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = GNOME ]; then preferred=gdm elif [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = KDE ]; then preferred=kdm elif [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = XDM ]; then preferred=xdm fi fi but the /etc/sysconfig/desktop looks like this: DESKTOP="KDE" There is no DISPLAYMANAGER variable in the /etc/sysconfig/desktop file. I changed DESKTOP to DISPLAYMANAGER and was able to change the greeter from GNOME to KDE. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): xinitrc-3.35-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Want to use the KDE greeter and not the GNOME Greeter 2. Change the /etc/sysconfig/desktop to DESKTOP="KDE" 3. Reboot system. 4. The GNOME Greeter is still active. Additional info:
There are two separate variables, "DESKTOP" which chooses wether you are using GNOME or KDE or whatever, and DISPLAYMANAGER, which is optional, and determines wether you want to use xdm/gdm/kdm. Both variables have existed in Red Hat OS products pretty much forever, and work as they always have. The variables work as they are intended to work, so you probably have a misunderstanding. Please read the documentation if you have any confusion over how these variables work or how they should be used properly. This is not a bug. Closing NOTABUG.
I experienced exactly the same issue and "resolved" it exactly the same way as Wayne did. The explanation in comment #1 does not sound sufficient to me. RH 9.0 referece guide says: In runlevel 5, the /etc/inittab runs a script called /etc/X11/prefdm. The prefdm script executes the preferred X display manager ó gdm, kdm, or xdm, depending on the contents of the /etc/sysconfig/desktop So if the /etc/sysconfig/desktop file sets the variable DESKTOP while the /etc/X11/prefdm checks the variable DISPLAYMANAGER, how can one depend on other? Something is wrong here. Where then the variable DISPLAYMANAGER is set?
As stated above, this is very much not a bug. The two variables serve totally different purposes, and both of you misunderstand them. I strongly suggest reading the installation manual and OS reference guides to learn how both of these variables are used, and if you continue to have problems, for you to seek technical support via one of the Red Hat mailing lists. These variables have worked the exact same way for the last 3-4 years, and do _exactly_ what they were designed to do, and they do work properly as intended. Bugzilla is _NOT_ a technical support forum, and this is entirely a technical support issue.