RHEL Engineering is moving the tracking of its product development work on RHEL 6 through RHEL 9 to Red Hat Jira (issues.redhat.com). If you're a Red Hat customer, please continue to file support cases via the Red Hat customer portal. If you're not, please head to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira and file new tickets here. Individual Bugzilla bugs in the statuses "NEW", "ASSIGNED", and "POST" are being migrated throughout September 2023. Bugs of Red Hat partners with an assigned Engineering Partner Manager (EPM) are migrated in late September as per pre-agreed dates. Bugs against components "kernel", "kernel-rt", and "kpatch" are only migrated if still in "NEW" or "ASSIGNED". If you cannot log in to RH Jira, please consult article #7032570. That failing, please send an e-mail to the RH Jira admins at rh-issues@redhat.com to troubleshoot your issue as a user management inquiry. The email creates a ServiceNow ticket with Red Hat. Individual Bugzilla bugs that are migrated will be moved to status "CLOSED", resolution "MIGRATED", and set with "MigratedToJIRA" in "Keywords". The link to the successor Jira issue will be found under "Links", have a little "two-footprint" icon next to it, and direct you to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira (issue links are of type "https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-XXXX", where "X" is a digit). This same link will be available in a blue banner at the top of the page informing you that that bug has been migrated.
Bug 590669 - gdm-restart does nothing, no indication which tool replaces it
Summary: gdm-restart does nothing, no indication which tool replaces it
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Classification: Red Hat
Component: gdm
Version: 6.0
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
medium
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: jmccann
QA Contact: desktop-bugs@redhat.com
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2010-05-10 13:06 UTC by Matthias Schroder
Modified: 2015-01-14 23:25 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

Fixed In Version: gdm-2.30.4-2.el6
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2010-11-10 20:27:39 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Matthias Schroder 2010-05-10 13:06:11 UTC 
Description of problem: gdm-restart does nothing, but I have not found any information concerning a possible replacement.


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


How reproducible: 100%


Steps to Reproduce:
1. run gdm-restart
2.
3.
  
Actual results: 
output: "Not supported"

Expected results: X11 restarted


Additional info: the script has been deprived off all functionality, it just spits out 'Not supported'. I can't find any hint indicating which tool is supposed to replace gdm-restart. Either a man page should be added, or gdm-restart should tell the user which tool to use instead.
Comment 2 RHEL Program Management 2010-05-10 14:32:13 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 2010-06-02 21:55:31 UTC 
There isn't a replacement.  That script was retained (perhaps mistakenly) in order so that scripts and spec files wouldn't break.  GDM is the parent process for every user login session and can't really be restarted simply.

Changing the behavior and output of the script at this point would be inconsistent with the reasons for the its existence - and mean we should just remove it.

I'd prefer to remove it.
Comment 4 jmccann 2010-06-04 16:31:03 UTC 
I have spec file fix ready to commit to remove the obsolete utilities.  Just need a rhel6 flag it seems.
Comment 5 Cameron Meadors 2010-06-04 17:57:42 UTC 
I want to make sure I understand this.  gdm-restart is being removed because you should not restart gdm because it would kill all sessions.  Is that correct?  My only use case for ever using gdm-restart directly was when testing gdm or when X hung and I needed to get back to a gdm greeter easily.  Is simply killing gdm the equivelent now?  I know this is a corner case but just want to make sure I understand the consequences of removing gdm-restart. It was also implied that other scripts used gdm-restart.  What were those and why do they not need that utility anymore.
Comment 6 jmccann 2010-06-04 18:22:44 UTC 
gdm-restart has been a no-op for quite a few Fedora releases now.  We kept it around mostly because we were lazy and didn't want to check for spec files that used it.  The gdm.spec uses it.  But there is value in not supporting commands that do nothing (or worse, confuse) in RHEL I think.

Simply killing gdm should cause it to be restarted, yes.  This is in the domain of the init system.  The init system is responsible for keeping services like this running.  If you want to stop the gdm service altogether you can do something like init 3 (or maybe there is some other upstart command).
Comment 7 Christopher Aillon 2010-06-04 23:01:25 UTC 
(In reply to comment #6)
> gdm-restart has been a no-op for quite a few Fedora releases now.  We kept it
> around mostly because we were lazy and didn't want to check for spec files that
> used it.  The gdm.spec uses it.

Just to clarify, is gdm.spec is the only place this is currently used?
Comment 9 Ray Strode [halfline] 2010-06-29 19:24:36 UTC 
This should be fixed now (although I forgot to mention it in the changelog)
Comment 12 releng-rhel@redhat.com 2010-11-10 20:27:39 UTC 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 is now available and should resolve
the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed
with a resolution of CURRENTRELEASE. You may reopen this bug report if the
solution does not work for you.
Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.