Q. I’d like to keep same login screen for my school Linux desktop system lab. How do I create a custom gnome login screen or menu under CentOS or Ubuntu Linux desktop systems?
A. You can easily customize all properties of a login screen. You can manually edit the files or use GUI tool.
Editing configuration files
Different Linux distribution stores GDM config files under diffrent directories:
- Debian / Ubuntu Linux: /etc/gdm directory
- RHEL / CentOS / Red Hat / Fedora Linux : /etc/X11/gdm directory
- OpenSuse / SUSE Linux : /etc/opt/gnome/gdm directory
Use ls command to view files:
$ ls -l /etc/gdm
Sample output:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 34141 2007-10-24 00:10 factory-gdm.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 132 2007-08-11 02:26 failsafeBlacklist -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7343 2007-09-07 05:57 failsafeDexconf -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1646 2007-10-07 22:26 failsafeXinit -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6207 2007-10-07 22:25 failsafeXServer -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 34141 2007-10-15 16:11 gdm.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2175 2008-01-16 13:08 gdm.conf-custom -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1564 2007-04-11 02:12 gdmprefetchlist drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-19 12:15 Init -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10842 2007-10-15 16:09 locale.conf drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-19 12:15 modules drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-19 12:15 PostLogin drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-19 12:15 PostSession drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-19 12:15 PreSession -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4182 2007-10-15 16:11 XKeepsCrashing -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6226 2007-10-15 16:12 Xsession
Usually, you need to only update gdm.conf file. However, this file should not be updated by hand. Since GDM 2.13.0.4, configuration choices in the GDM System Configuration file (gdm.conf) will override the default values specified in this file.
Gui tool
Type the following command to open GUI configuration tool:
# gdmsetup
or
$ sudo gdmsetup
Now you should able to customize login screen:
Fig. 01: gdmsetup in action
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where the heck is login WINDOW
Also, see text below taken from the GDM help supplied with Fedora 14:
The icons used by GDM can be installed globally by the sysadmin or can
be located in the user’s home directories. If installed globally
they should be in the /pixmaps/faces/
directory and the filename should be the name of the user. Face image
files should be a standard image that GTK+ can read, such as PNG or
JPEG. Face icons placed in the global face directory must be readable
to the GDM user.
If there is no global icon for the user, GDM will look in the user’s
$HOME directory for the image file. GDM will first look for the user’s
face image in ~/.face. If not found, it will try
~/.face.icon. If still not found, it will use the
value defined for “face/picture=” in the
~/.gnome2/gdm file.
If a user has no defined face image, GDM will use the
“stock_person” icon defined in the current GTK+ theme. If no
such image is defined, it will fallback to a generic face image.
Please note that loading and scaling face icons located in remote user
home directories can be a very time-consuming task. Since it not
practical to load images over NIS or NFS, GDM does not attempt to load
face images from remote home directories.
Nice. Thanks for the info
there is no gdmsetup in RHEL 6.3. I cant see gdm directory in /etc/X11 as well