gdm early login

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Apr 7, 2005 11:49 AM, Ray Strode <rstrode at redhat.com> wrote:
> > It would be nice if those were somehow visible as well.
> You can press ctrl-alt-f1 to see them.

It would still be nice to SEE activity by default to give an
indication of whats going on. A small spinner or progress bar,
something indicating activity of the scripts. You also want some
notification if there is an unexpected error. The big console
blackhole like rhgb has might be overkill, but something to indicate
there was a failure in at least one script would be useful.  Sure you
can go back and check the logs after boot to get specifics.. but
without some form of notification at boot time about a script
failure.. how do you know to check the logs?  And if there is a
failure, having an option at the gdm login window to fire up a log
review tool would be very good maybe as a modification to the failsafe
environment.

Also... when you finally get to the point where you are able to login
before all services are completed. There will  be a need for
notification as to when all services have been completed. For
example.. a notification area icon that is active until all system
services are done.   You can probably do okay at identifying what
needs to be started before login for "most" desktop users. But I
garuntee you there will be some of us who want to make sure we don't
attempt to do somethings until all services are started and the
easiest way to keep us from getting mad is to provide notification
when bootscripts have stopped.

AND that notification mechanism needs to flag script failures in some
way. Again it doesn't have to have specifics.. but it should be enough
notification so you can know to manually check the logs. Even better
if it can provide access to a gui tool to review the logs via a click
or right-click menu.  The rhn applet artwork comes to mind... except
instead of going blue checkmark at the end the applet just stops
running if all the scripts finished with no errors.

And one last thing.. I can not stress enough how absolutely bad from a
security stand point it is to allow people to login username/password
at the gdm prompt and then let them wait some unspecified period of
time before the actual login begins. Encouraging people to walk away
and get coffee after the have inputted their password is a recipe for
an insecure systems. As soon as a password is entered the system needs
to start the login process and get to a desktop.

-jef