Has development of SLiM ceased?

[Fitzcarraldo]

I was wondering about the status of SLiM these days. I haven't used SLiM myself since four years ago, but was thinking about using it again with Xfce on another old laptop.

The Wikipedia page on SLiM states the following:

As of March, 2016, SLiM seems to be abandoned. It is not fully compatible with systemd.

The Arch Linux Wiki page on SLiM states the following:

Warning: The SliM project has been abandoned (last release was 2013, the project homepage is down), and is not fully compatible with systemd, including logind sessions. Consider using a different Display manager or Xinitrc.

Has development (and maintenance) of SLiM really ceased? What is its future?

[fedeliallalinea]

Has development (and maintenance) of SLiM really ceased?

No code after 2013-10-02, I think yes.

What is its future?

If nobody fork or takes the time for maintain the code the project will die

[C5ace]

Installed a Xfce openrc system with slim last week. Simple and works very well without complications on about 20 other Xfce openrc systems I installed during the last 2 years and maintain.

There is no need to to develop and maintain code that is bug free and works as intended. If you want to keep thinks simple, use grub-static or lilo, openrc, slim and xfce, or Lxde. Stay away from grub-2, systemd and similar unless you need their complexities and special features.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Apparently SLiM cannot work with systemd in any case.

I didn't have any trouble using GRUB2 with Gentoo Stable + SLiM + OpenRC + Xfce four years ago. Have you had trouble with GRUB2 recently with such an installation, then?

[Hu]

Could you provide a citation for what systemd does wrong that requires modifications to Slim to make them compatible?

[Ant P.]

SLiM has one unfixed bug with possible security implications: it opens a log file as root and doesn't close the file handle properly before exec'ing the desktop session.
Try this in a terminal as your normal user...

Code: Select all

echo foo >&3
tail -1 /var/log/slim.log
ls -l /var/log/slim.log
whoami

[asturm]

Apparently SLiM cannot work with systemd in any case.

Didn't work for me with openrc either, back when I tried...

[fedeliallalinea]

Apparently SLiM cannot work with systemd in any case.

Didn't work for me with openrc either, back when I tried...

Before plasma 5 I used xfce4 with slim without problem

[eccerr0r]

SLiM worked for me but felt really clunky so I stopped using it for the most part (opting for lightdm). I think I have one USB stick that still has it but it's a fairly old install. This was for openrc, I did not try for systemd.

It seems Gentoo does have some patches for systemd, not sure what features it adds. Or perhaps subtracts, it seems to pull out consolekit support for systemd and doesn't even try setting up logind sessions.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Could you provide a citation for what systemd does wrong that requires modifications to Slim to make them compatible?

Nope. I'm simply going on what the Arch Linux Wiki page on SLiM states:

Warning: The SliM project has been abandoned (last release was 2013, the project homepage is down), and is not fully compatible with systemd, including logind sessions. Consider using a different Display manager or Xinitrc.

Are you using SLiM with systemd successfully, then?

Anyway, systemd is a red herring, since I would not be wanting to use it in the proposed installation (I was simply responding to C5ace's comment vis-à-vis SLiM to "Stay away from grub-2, systemd and similar unless you need their complexities and special features.").

What I'm actually interested in knowing is whether it would be OK to use SLiM with a Gentoo Linux stable installation using OpenRC and Xfce, or whether it would be better to opt for a different DM.

[mv]

Could you provide a citation for what systemd does wrong that requires modifications to Slim to make them compatible?

This only refers to logind. However, logind != systemd. You can use systemd as a bootmanager without using logind. Also the opposite is possible to some extent.

[candrews]

FWIW, I'm a former slim user, and I've found x11-misc/sddm to be a great replacement. It's minimal and simple like slim, but maintained and compatible with systemd.

[Hu]

Are you using SLiM with systemd successfully, then?

I don't use SLiM or systemd, so no. I was merely curious what systemd broke this time that led to SLiM presumably working with non-systemd, but not working with systemd.

[kitsunenokenja]

When trying to find documentation on SLIM, for keyboard shortcuts in particular, I discovered the URL often attributed to the project is no longer hosted and that the project is indeed dead. A shame, a simple and lightweight DM like SLIM was perfect. Went to lightdm and not particularly thrilled. It seems the only way to have a flexible theming of it is to resort to some crazy deps to get web-based support to do so. Why would you rely on web tech for a DM!? I may have to look into SDDM and give it a try. Oh, I use OpenRC so systemd compatibility is out the window.

[asturm]

Before plasma 5 I used xfce4 with slim without problem

Maybe it was me but in 2 out of 3 times, slim created a 100% load runaway process. Maybe I tried it at a bad time.

[eccerr0r]

If you want plain, you can use the old fashioned xdm, there's nothing simpler as this is the original. Last I checked it even has consolekit support, but I don't know how well its systemd support is. Note that I think its default install may try to set up xconsole which is unneeded, that can be removed.

I only tried SLiM to try SLiM, xdm I've used when I first started using X (sheesh, it's been 20 years...), and with consolekit/systemd I opted for lightdm because it has an obvious and easy way to shut down without needing to login. It is not to say it's without faults, accountsservice and gtk-greeter have been annoying.

[krinn]

I'm using slim (with mate) and it work for me, i wasn't aware about log issue Ant P. mention, so i have just disable logging facility, which i don't need anyway.

[C5ace]

I didn't have any trouble using GRUB2 with Gentoo Stable + SLiM + OpenRC + Xfce four years ago. Have you had trouble with GRUB2 recently with such an installation, then?

I use a "cut & paste" install script to install Gentoo / Xfce stable. It takes about about 6 to 10 minutes of my time to start the installation. This completes overnight on a fast laptop and results in a complete Xfce system. If I include Thunderbird, Firefox and Libreoffice, it takes another 12 to 24 hours. Grub2, LightDM, requires manual intervention and have more complexities.

My favorite firewall is Bastille from 2002.

[mv]

so i have just disable logging facility, which i don't need anyway.

How do you do that?

[krinn]

so i have just disable logging facility, which i don't need anyway.

How do you do that?

Code: Select all

sed -i 's/logfile/#logfile/' /etc/slim.conf 

[mv]

Code: Select all

sed -i 's/logfile/#logfile/' /etc/slim.conf 

I am afraid that this has no effect: It seems to me from the code that if it is not set in /etc/slim.conf, a default is chosen which is (surprise!) /var/log/slim.log

[eccerr0r]

What if you set the file to /dev/null ?
Still wastes cpu cycles to log, but at least /dev/null won't fill up.

[mv]

What if you set the file to /dev/null ?

I had also thought about this, but I am not sure whether it will really solve the security issue. Actually, I am not even sure what the security issue is. In my case, &3 is not accessible.
Anyway, I switched now to sddm, to be on the safe side: There might also be other unknown security issues.

[eccerr0r]

As far as I know, it allows an unprivileged user fill up disk space as "root" (since root owns that log file) using any reserved space as well - denial of service. I don't think there's a privilege escalation problem here, but if the file is readable, that's also a way to get past disk quotas...

[ct85711]

Well, you can easily restrict the amount of storage the logs takes with log rotate, in that there is an option of the amount of old logs to keep (and compress the old logs), and also an option to automatically rotate on log size; so if the log ever gets say like 1M or so (the size limit can be defined in the log rotate configs) in size, so it will never take up more than that much. As far as permissions go, logrotate has the create option which allows you to specify the permissions and owner of the log file to be created; thus will ensure the file will always be created with what permissions you want.