On 04/03/2012 05:23 PM, Ken Moffat wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Ken Moffat<[email protected]>  -----
>
>   Sent this after a very long night, but it doesn't seem to have
> arrived.  Trying again.
>
>   Well, I've now fixed my mouse (cable problems) and tested gdm.
> I've now got it "working" (i.e. able to use my xsession files for
> 'startfluxbox' and 'icewm-session', and now, at last, gnome itself
> has found the applications (item 1.1 below) :
>
>   This is a summary of play:
>
> 1.  I built in /usr, and went with /etc/gnome for GNOME_SYSCONFDIR.
> People have already pointed out that /etc is more normal.  For gdm,
> if gnome-settings-daemon.desktop is not in /etc/gnome/xdg/autostart
> (there are other places on its search path, but /etc/gnome and
> /etc/gnome-3.2 are not among them), then gdm will fail to start (the
> details are logged in /var/log/daemon.log.  I have no idea what
> happens if you build somewhere else such as /opt/gnome.
>
> 1.1 Originally, I was going to say that I had gdm working, but only
> for non-gnome windowmanagers.  The problem is another side-effect of
> not putting everything in /etc/xdg : the menus (in my case) are in
> /etc/gnome/xdg/menus - metacity (and presumably gnome-shell) can't
> find them, so although it will let you access 'places'  (e.g. ~/)
> and logout, you can't do anything!  Symlinking the menus from
> /etc/xdg solved that.
>
> 1.2 I suppose we could stress that anyone not building in /usr&&
> /etc needs to provide symlinks in /etc/xdg if they want to use gdm ?
>
> ---
> UPDATE: if this mail gets through, I'll reply with the logs showing
> where it searches.  I've got other files in /etc/gnome/xdg/autostart,
> e.g. from bluetooth-applet, caribou, gnome-sound-applet : I suspect
> all of them ought to be symlinked.  Most of them are not things I
> use.
> ---
>
> 2.  The bootscript is old-style.  Works, but not in the current
> Provides/Required-Start/... style.  If I was motivated, I could
> probably come up with something, but whether it would have the
> correct names for the variables is anybody's guess.  I still think
> the old scripts were better because they were easy to understand -
> no doubt there is a key somewhere explaining things such as
> "$network", but I suspect it is in a locked drawer in a room marked
> "beware of the leopard" ;-)
>
> 3. The default gnome session installed by gdm (i.e. without d-bus)
> reports an error, something along the lines of failing to find the
> clock applet.  Since D-Bus is *required* for gnome (e.g. GConf needs
> d-bus glib bindings), we could either overwrite the inadequate
> version it supplies, or perhaps better (to retain the translations -
> see attachment) sed Exec= and TryExec= to use the book's
> preferences.  Either way, the sentence "If you have D-BUS installed
> and you want to start the session D-BUS daemon..." needs to be
> reqorded.  I suspect the suggestion to use gdm without D-Bus is just
> historical baggage, but I don't understand why gdm ships a version
> that can't find everything.  Maybe soemthing else is in the wrong
> place ?
>
> 4. For many of the PAM files in /etc/pam.d we chmod them to 644
> after root has created them, but for a couple of newer ones the
> chmod is not mentioned.  Looking at my results, they are 644 -
> should be keep the chmod in case people have weird settings, and
> therefore do it for all these files, or can we just assume
> everything will be ok ?
>
>   I'll also note that something about the gdm window (probably the
> buttons - they seem a bit OS9, i.e 1990s mac) offends my sense of
> taste: usually I don't particularly care, and the striped blue
> background looks ok if you like that sort of thing, but I do wonder
> where they are going with this.  Perhaps it looks better on more
> powerful hardware which doesn't use the fallback - even the Sandy
> Bridge i3/i965 I bought last week doesn't fit the bill for
> gnome-shell, so who knows.
>
>   I still plan to look at the gnome dependencies (to reduce what we
> list by removing implicit deps), and I guess I can tag gdm as tested
> in 7.0 - subject to agreement on dealing with the consequences of
> not building in /usr and /etc.  But for the remaining points above,
> I'm not sure.
>
> --- attachment for default gnome.desktop inlined but mostly edited
> out, I suspect this was what caused the mail not to get through.  It
> has 'translations' of 'Name' and 'comment' in many languages - some
> of which even I don't have fonts for.  They were the poit of
> attaching it, but whatever
> [Desktop Entry]
> Name=GNOME
> ...
> Name[en_GB]=GNOME
> ...
> Comment=This session logs you into GNOME
> ...
> Comment[en_GB]=This session logs you into GNOME
> ...
> Exec=gnome-session
> TryExec=gnome-session
> Icon=
> Type=Application
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> ĸen

Great. And then everyone told me how /etc/gnome and prefix other than 
/usr can work. Well, yes they can. But there is a lot of additional 
configuration that needs to be done, and also I still haven't found a 
way to make policykit rules installed somewhere else than in /usr 
available to the daemon. So, I am asking again. If everyone else agrees, 
I'd like to drop GNOME_SYSCONFDIR - lot easier than making symlinks and 
if possible GNOME_PREFIX or keep it with fat warning that it might break 
things (that is if anyone wants to test if that works, I'm not going to 
do that).
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