Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 329281
/etc/X11/prefdm doesn't allow enterprise customization
Last modified: 2009-03-17 12:08:58 EDT
Description of problem: As described in: http://enterprise.kde.org/articles/korporatedesktop2.php KDEDIRS variable allows flexible way to configure and customize all KDE software. When using kdm that starts the kdm_greet, those environment variables need to be passed somehow to it. Now it gets tricky as kdm itself is not linked against kde libraries and by default, it doesn't pass environment variables to kdm if not explicitly told in /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc with ExportList=KDEDIR,KDEDIRS which is commented out by default. So, kdmrc would allow passing it if we could first customize it. kdm allows a -config cli option, but there is no way to set it without modifying the /etc/X11/prefdm. KDEDIRS environment itself would be easily defined in /etc/security/pam_env.conf and /etc/pam.d/kdm but that does not solve the problem that there is no way to set customized kdmrc file without modifying shipped rpm packages. Possible solution could be to uncomment the ExportList from shipped kdebase package. But I think it would also be good to allow customize other kdmrc options from /etc/sysconfig/desktop file by changing the the line preferred=/usr/bin/kdm to preferred="/usr/bin/kdm $KDMOPTIONS" allowing to set up debugging etc from /etc/sysconfig/desktop file. I know that there can be more than one Theme under /usr but I'd rather keep the whole stuff under KDEDIRS search path as it allows centralized location whole org stuff. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): initscripts-8.45.14.EL-1 kdebase-3.5.4 How reproducible: Always. Expected results: Flexible use of KDEDIRS for whole KDE. Additional info: If someone knows better way to customize kdm_greet screen, please, share your ideas. I also noticed that prefdm is flagged as c (configuration file) and thus it would be okay to modify it, but I rather place my configuration to files that are not shipped by upstream to avoid .rpmnew files.
Ugh, sorry about the delay. I suspect the best way to do this is to have KDM have better mechanisms for customization like this. That would need tackled upstream, and isn't really practical to change in RHEL. Closing as 'UPSTREAM', as it's not a specific feature we'd add. In the meantime, you should be able to just set DISPLAYMANAGER in /etc/sysconfig/desktop to a custom commandline to exec KDM in whatever fashion you need.