kdm

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

moin,

i'm in the process of changing some things in kdm. particularily
interesting is the directory structure.
according to current kde standards the layout would be something like
this:

$KDEDIR/share/config/kdm/{kdmrc,...}
  -> config, obviously ...
$KDEDIR/share/apps/kdm/sessions/*.desktop
  -> session type definitions
$KDEDIR/share/apps/kdm/users/<name>.{face,face.icon,dmrc}
  -> users's big images (preferably 300²); this won't be used right now
     except as a fallback
  -> users's small images (should be 48²)
  -> users's dmrc-s in shared dir *)
  - the dir is 0755 owned by root, the dmrc-s are 0600 and are owned by
    their respective users. the admin might want to give the users
    ownership of their faces as well.
$KDEDIR/share/apps/kdm/kdmsts
  -> state file, currently saving only the previous user on every
     display

*) the usual mode of operation is to have ~/.dmrc (an extended version
of the current ~/.wmrc), but some remote file systems don't grant access
to home directories before authenticating, even to root.

however, according to fhs and what configure --help outputs, this is
utterly broken:
  -> as opposed to typical kde applications, kdm's files in share/config
     are not only system defaults, but the real r/w config. consequently
     it belongs into some etc/ dir. i'm not overzealous about that part.
  -> the face files are something between configuration and working
     data; i think it should go to var/lib/
  -> share/apps as the location of the dmrcs and kdmsts is simply out of
     question, as this is kdm's working data and definitely does not
     belong on a potentially read-only partition.
     fwiw, previously no shared dmrc dir existed and kdmsts was saved in
     share/config, which is definitely wrong.
we have a few more global daemons in kde, so this situation definitely
needs clearing up.

the second part ... jirka (the gdm guy) an me are trying to create
something like a standard for dm configuration. it's supposed to cover
session type definitions, the previous session type saving and user
images (faces). the dir layout would be something like that:
/etc/X11/sessions/
 -> every compliant window manager/desktop environment installs its own
    .desktop files here. for "legacy" wms a common package needs to be
    created.
/var/lib/dm/
 -> generally working data. for kdm that would be kdmsts
/var/lib/dm/users/<name>.{face,face.icon,dmrc}
 -> global face and saved session choice location
 it might be an option to split out the faces into an own directory, like
 /usr/share/lib/faces, /var/lib/faces or even /etc/faces, given that this
 could be considered global [configuration] data.

comments from core developers are explicitly welcome. ;)

greetings

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