[LightDM] lightdm and running the xserver without root rights

[Robert Ancell]

Hi Hans,

Thanks for raising this! I've opened a bug [1] for this. I think this is a
good feature for LightDM to support if distributions want to shift to this
method in the future.

While we've been wanting non-root X forever in Ubuntu my guess is we will
shift to using Mir/Unity System Compositor which will remove the need for a
root X server. So that means it's unlikely I will personally spend any time
implementing this. What is less clear is what the Ubuntu derivatives
(Xubuntu etc) will do.

If other LightDM consumers want/need this please add information to the bug
so we know of the demand. I'm happy to review code of anyone who wants to
implement this. It shouldn't be too hard with the changes we made to
support next generation display servers like Mir and Wayland.

Thanks,
--Robert

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/lightdm/+bug/1292324


On 14 March 2014 09:08, Hans de Goede <hdegoede at redhat.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Quick self intro: I've been a FOSS developer since 1996, recently
> I've mostly been working on USB support in the kernel, libusb and qemu.
> I've started working for Red Hat 5 years ago and recently I've changed
> teams to the Graphics team.
>
> Currently I'm finishing support for systemd-logind's new session-controller
> API (TakeControl and friends) for Xorg, with the purpose that the xserver
> will use systemd-logind to open and manage input and drm devices for it,
> so that it will no longer need root rights.
>
> In order for this to work the X server needs to be started inside the
> users (pam) session. This is identical to how things will work between
> wayland and systemd-logind, so any work done to support this will
> also apply to future wayland support.
>
> For this to work the xserver will also need to be able to access
> the vc (/dev/tty#) on which it is being started so this needs to
> be setup properly too.
>
> Note I've already had a discussion about this with the gdm maintainer
> on the xorg-devel list, see:
> http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.freedesktop.xorg.devel/38796
>
> For some more info, all see the slides of my Fosdem talk on this:
> https://fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/rootless_xserver/
>
> Video of the talk is here:
>
> http://video.fosdem.org/2014/H1301_Cornil/Saturday/Making_the_Xserver_run_without_root_rights.webm
>
> I hope you can add support for this to lightdm. If you've any questions
> let me know.
>
> Thanks & Regards,
>
> Hans
> _______________________________________________
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> LightDM at lists.freedesktop.org
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>
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