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depontius
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 Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 1:34 pm Post subject: Select new login manager - was: Lost remote X capability |
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EDIT:
So at this point I've crossed the bridge that I want to at least try out a new login manager. The problem is that xorg-server has changed it's default to not listen for tcp connections, and gdm does not seem readily configurable to handle this change. I can tweak the source code, but first I'd like to get something that just works. Besides, I've been staying back at a back-level release on a local overlay, and I'd just as soon use live code.
So the subject is changing from "Lost remote X capability" to "Select new login manager", and I'll pick up at the end of the thread.
OLD:
Some time in the last week or so I seem to have lost my remote X connection capability. I normally do maintenance on weekends, and seem to remember noting an oddity last weekend, but didn't think much of it - I just worked around the problem. This weekend I noticed it more fully. I couldn't start a GUI editor on a remote machine, and took a little time to dig in.
When I run "netstat -tupln" I see nothing listening on port 6000 - so X isn't even listening for remote connections. I normally use (pre-systemd) gdm-2.20.11, and it has been working fine for me for years. I'm running xorg-server-1.17.0:
| Code: | $ emerge -ptv xorg-server
These are the packages that would be merged, in reverse order:
Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild R ~] x11-base/xorg-server-1.17.0:0/1.17.0 USE="glamor nptl suid udev xorg -dmx -doc -ipv6 -kdrive -minimal (-selinux) -static-libs -systemd -tslib -unwind -wayland -xephyr -xnest -xvfb" 0 KiB
Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 KiB
* IMPORTANT: 15 news items need reading for repository 'gentoo'.
* Use eselect news to read news items. |
Nothing in here looks like it would have set me to local-only. I've also looked in /var/log/Xorg.0.log and /var/log/gdm/:0.log and neither says anything about connections or sockets at all, let along local vs remote.
Is anyone else seeing anything like this?
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Last edited by depontius on Mon Feb 23, 2015 12:23 am; edited 1 time in total |
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szatox
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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Show us your result of
ps aux | grep '/usr/bin/X' |
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depontius
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Code: | $ ps -aux | grep /usr/bin/X
root 2923 3.9 0.2 274280 57652 tty7 Ssl+ 06:28 5:28 /usr/bin/X :0 -audit 0 -auth /var/gdm/:0.Xauth vt7 |
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szatox
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 2:48 pm Post subject: |
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well, this part looks fine. On which host you checked for open ports?
If you login with ssh, the remote host doesn't have to report post 6000 open. At least my doesn't and it's still working.
Is $DISPLAY setcorrectly? Maybe it's not overriden by client so the app is displayed on the remote machine instead?
Have you tried forwarding with -Y option instead of -X? (trusted mode) |
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Jaglover
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depontius
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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I'm checking on the host where I'm running.
I normally don't do "ssh -X" (or -Y) - I manage xauth and export DISPLAY. "ssh -X" needs something extra to handle "su -" and let root use X, and I never actually got that side of things working. Simply exporting DISPLAY always worked well enough for me.
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Jaglover
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depontius
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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I start X through gdm, and the stanza in there that used to do the job is:
| Code: | [security]
DisallowTCP=false |
It's still there, but doesn't work. What you say makes sense, but now I have to understand how gdm passes that over to X when it sterts it. I also have to hope that it's scripted and can be tweaked from here, rather than having to patch the code.
This may be the straw that broke the gdm's back. I went shopping for alternatives once, finding nothing that did everything I needed. At the time I wanted xdcmp, which was a bit of a deal-breaker for several display managers. I've rather dropped that requirement in the past few months.
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Hu
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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| If you manage DISPLAY by hand, you are likely forcing the X11 traffic to flow in cleartext over TCP, rather than inside an ssh-encrypted forwarding. This may or may not matter to you from a security perspective. |
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depontius
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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This is all inside my own home. If someone able to snoop my network, I've got bigger problems than the fact that they're snooping my network - I have an intruder.
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Jaglover
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depontius
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Jaglover wrote: | | Code: | ~ $ cat .xserverrc
exec /usr/bin/X -listen tcp
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This works for me, may not work with your setup. |
Done. I can't log out now - one system is at 7 of 15 on weekend update. But I've created the file with your contents. I presume it needs to be executable?
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Jaglover
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szatox
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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depontius, you seem to be using GDM, so one of it's files will most likely contain the line.
Perhaps grepping through /etc for '/usr/bin/X :0 -audit 0 -auth' would find it. Can't be sure, I have slim |
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depontius
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| szatox wrote: | depontius, you seem to be using GDM, so one of it's files will most likely contain the line.
Perhaps grepping through /etc for '/usr/bin/X :0 -audit 0 -auth' would find it. Can't be sure, I have slim |
I've gone to /etc/X11/gdm and done "grep -R "bin/X" *" already with no luck.
As I said, this may be the straw that broke gdm's back, especially now that I've dropped my with for xdcmp. I need a display manager with:
1 - Set up X for remote connections
2 - Auto-login for my wife's computer
3 - Tolerate /home on NFS. (I'm not sure I really need this one, I can run xauth whereever I need to, but gdm has a setting for allowing the cookie on NFS.)
A few months back when I was also insisting on xdcmp, gdm was the only game in town.
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szatox
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| Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 10:22 pm Post subject: |
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Does display manager even know where /home actually is?
Anyway, there are some things you might try with gdm:
| Quote: | try creating instead
/etc/gdm/custom.conf containing just
[security]
DisallowTCP=false |
| Quote: | sudo gedit /etc/gdm/gdm.schemas
find:
<schema>
<key>security/DisallowTCP</key>
<signature>b</signature>
<default>true</default>
</schema>
shift from true to false: |
might be outdated, but I bet you will notice if it's the case 
| Quote: | | Try running /usr/bin/gdmsetup. Select the "Remote" tab and in the "Style" window select one of the options other than "Remote login disabled." |
Good luck |
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depontius
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| Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 5:34 pm Post subject: |
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Still no dice. I found nothing like gdm.schemas, even in /usr/share/gdm, which is the only place I found anything remotely resembling XML. That was a glade file, which looked as if it drove the setup GUI. I did find /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc and changed the "-nolisten tcp" to "-listen tcp", to no avail.
I haven't run gdmsetup yet. I think I'll try that, and if it doesn't work it's time to start shopping.
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Jaglover
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depontius
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| Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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I just used gdmsetup and added the "-listen tcp" to what I thought might have been the line to start the X server. No go.
Time to shop. I'd rather use something off-the-shelf. I'll fiddle with gdm source if I don't find something else I like. As I've said before, I believe that dropping xdcmp will make the search easier.
I guess I can't blame gdm for this, other than in not being properly flexible. It's really xorg-server that changed its default. Really, here is a poster-child for classic Unix, scripting, etc. I've just lost capability. Had this little piece been configured by scripting, I'd be back in business already.
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depontius
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| Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 12:30 am Post subject: |
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I've narrowed the list down a bit, based on intrusiveness considerations. For instance, lightdm requires polkit, and sddm calls in a pile of ~arch QT stuff, and for now I don't want that much churn.
My considerations are:
1 - Remote X capability for my home network.
2 - Autologin for my wife's ease.
3 - Individual session types - I'm currently using "Xsession" and have my wife set for xfce, while I use icewm.
4 - Shutdown/Reboot buttons at the greeter screen.
At the moment I have the list down to qingy, lxdm, slim, wdm, and cdm. I suppose I could use xdm again, and keep re-adding the tk shutdown/reboot buttons I used years and years ago, assuming I can find them again. For a while there xdm was seeing a lot of churn, and it was a pain re-adding them every time. It looks to me as if qingy is quite a bit different in operation, but that probably shouldn't dissuade me if it's good in other respects.
Suggest, prefer, pursuade, convince...
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szatox
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| Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 7:52 pm Post subject: |
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create a wrapper script for X, add it to $PATH and forget?
I think your use case is not very common, so it will be damn hard to get any input. Wrapper sems to be good like in "it doesn't require maintenance on every single update" |
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Jaglover
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| Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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szatox,
I do not know in what environment GDM is running, the $PATH may be not set, to avoid malfunctioning GDM may have /usr/bin/X hardcoded. Since X is a symlink to Xorg replacing X with a wrapper would work, but it will not be upgrade-proof.
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Ant P.
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| Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 4:48 pm Post subject: |
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| I use slim; it does what I want but the implementation is of questionable quality - it leaks a root-owned log filehandle to all child processes if you allow it to daemonize itself (the default under OpenRC). |
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depontius
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| Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2015 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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Good point about a wrapper...
| Code: | $ cat /usr/bin/Xwrap
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/Xorg -listen tcp ${*}
$ ls -l /usr/bin/X*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 Feb 25 16:09 /usr/bin/X -> Xwrap
-rws--x--x 1 root root 2120704 Feb 12 13:20 /usr/bin/Xorg
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1592624 Dec 9 20:15 /usr/bin/Xvnc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 47 Feb 25 16:08 /usr/bin/Xwrap |
It works. It's a bit of a hack, a bit of a stopgap. Maybe what I should do is just install a range of login managers, try them out, and see which I like. But for now I'm functional again. I may leave this thread open a bit longer, assuming I try alternatives in the next month. Maybe I'll install the alternatives along with weekly service, this weekend.
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