Most unix/linux password prompts, shell prompts and gtk text entry boxes support using Control-U to clear the previously entered text. Somehow the latest gdm seems to have (accidentally I hope) broken/removed support for this. This used to work on all previous version of RedHat and Fedora including and up to Fedora 8. Supporting this feature should take no effort since gtk entries support this by default. I don't see this explicitly being disabled in the source, but I could just have missed, so maybe it's a bug? I'm using gdm-2.22.0-8.fc9.x86_64.
Hey Jim, Yea, the feature definitely wasn't intentionally excluded (although I don't think gtk entries support it by default unless they're running in emacs mode) Anyway, we should fix this, but would you mind moving the bug upstream? If you don't want to, I can. Jon or I will probably still be the ones that end up fixing the issue, but it's nicer when the reports are in one place.
Thanks Ray. I added the bug to the gnome bugzilla and linked it back here. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_activity.cgi?id=541958
Thanks much, Jim.