[LightDM] dm-tool lock confusion

[Robert Ancell]

Hi Yves-Alexis,

If you are using your greeter as a lock screen then this does work. From
the greeter you can authenticate and return to the session that you've
locked (it has hints set so the greeter can render this appropriately).
When you switch to the greeter, the existing session is locked using
ConsoleKit / logind so if you manually get back to it using VT switching it
will be locked using gnome-screensaver or similar.

In the future as systems move away from VT switching it will be impossible
to get back to your session without authenticating using the greeter thus
removing the need for gnome-screensaver.

Not all OSs are moving towards this method. For example, GNOME uses an
in-shell lock screen that communicates back to GDM for authentication. In
Ubuntu we are still using gnome-screensaver because we've found VT
switching to be problematic. When we switch to Mir we no longer use VT
switching and we will use the greeter.

Note also as previously announced on this mailing list there is a fork of
gnome screensaver called light-locker (
https://github.com/the-cavalry/light-locker) which provides the minimal
locking functionality to protect against VT switching and uses the greeter
for the lock screen.

Hope this helps,
--Robert


On 16 July 2013 17:43, Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac at debian.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I was just made aware of the “dm-tool lock” command, which I find pretty
> confusing. What it does is actually just to open a new vt with a login
> screen, it doesn't actually lock the screen, as far as I can tell.
> What's the reason for calling it lock? I think it might confuse people
> and have them left their session unlocked and free to use.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Yves-Alexis
>
> _______________________________________________
> LightDM mailing list
> LightDM at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/lightdm
>
>
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