Re: ‘staging’ and GNOME updates

[Timothy Sample]

Hi Ricardo,

Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> writes:

> Turns out that the problem was with a stale /var/lib/gdm – which makes
> me wonder: we do we have this at all?  “/var/lib/gdm” is the “gdm” user
> account’s home directory.  But it’s not like this really needs to be
> persistent, I think.
>
> I moved it out of the way and the gdm login prompt appeared within a few
> seconds.  After restarting xorg-server the directory was recreated.
>
> Now, I *still* cannot actually log in, but the problem is likely very
> similar.
>
> [two minutes pass]
>
> Yup, after moving /home/rekado/.cache out of the way, everything is fine
> and I can log in.
>
> What should we do about this?  For gdm I think it would make sense to
> add an activation service extension that clears the gdm user’s home
> directory.  And more generally, maybe we should offer a generic cache
> cleaner service.
>
> Thoughts?

I had a similar issue where the UID of the “gdm” user had changed
between reconfigures.  I think it happened because I removed the GDM
service for a while and then brought it back.  It took me a while to
figure it out, because of course everything looks fine at first glance.
However, GDM could no longer access “/var/lib/gdm”, and I had to remove
it to fix the problem.

The X.org logs all end up in that directory, so it might a little
frustrating for someone having X.org issues if we delete that directory
all the time.  I don’t remember if they get copied anywhere else.
Taking a closer look, I see that stuff like whether the on-screen
keyboard should be displayed gets saved there, too.

Maybe it would make more sense to delete the “/var/lib/gdm/.cache”
folder and ensure the permissions of the rest of it in an activation
script.  WDYT?


-- Tim