arctica-greeter does not honor gsettings changes

[saivinoba]

The new arctica-greeter being used in Ubuntu MATE 20.10 does not allow any changes to its settings/theme. Both the direct edit of 90-arctica-greeter.conf file and changes via gsettings/dconf-editor do not get desired result. There is a bug on launchpad.

I would like to add that it is not specific to Ubuntu MATE. Same issue exists on LinuxMint if we install+enable arctica-greeter.

[kmjax]

I experience the same issue as describe with Ubuntu MATE 20.10. Nothing I change in the settings is recognized. The behavior of Arctica Greeter is exactly the same as it was upon install. Is there a way to change the settings?

[sunweaver]

I experienced the same issue, and i decided to play with dconf/gsettings a little bit.
I have discovered that launching arctica-greeter with the --test-mode honor the changes made by the user who launch it; so if i change the settings with sudo, the test mode work, if launched as root; the same hold for the normal user account.

But unfortunately the actual greeter still don't work as expected.

@kmjax, @saivinoba: arctica-greeter runs as user "lightdm". Changing things with dconf-editor while logged doesn't have an impact. You need to run dconf-editor on behalf user "lightdm". It probably is much easier to add a gschema .override file to /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/.

Closing this one, the above is expected behaviour.

[FalcoGer]

Can not run dconf-editor as lightdm user.

❯ sudo -u lightdm dconf-editor
[sudo] password for ******:
Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified

(dconf-editor:12392): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:01:04.642: cannot open display: :0.0
❯ sudo -H -u lightdm dconf-editor
Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified

(dconf-editor:12445): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:01:13.834: cannot open display: :0.0                                                                                          [ 0,145s ]
❯ sudo -u lightdm bash
> lightdm(******):~>dconf-editor
Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified

(dconf-editor:12587): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:01:31.014: cannot open display: :0.0

Expected behavior doesn't mean it's not a problem.

[LAfricain]

Why this issue is closed? The problem is still present in Ubuntu Mate 22.04, almost for the language select applet.

[sunweaver]

Please use a .gschema.override file in /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas and put your preferences in their. The greeter is sysadmin realm and we currently don't have a UI interface for manipulating that.

Slick-Greeter has a duplicate settings system (Gsettings combined with some file somewhere in /etc/. For Arctica Greeter, it is not planned to adopt this approach.

[sunweaver]

The keyboard indicator needs special treatment as it is not part of the greeter. It neither does use gsettings, it uses AccountsService for propagating the keyboard layout setting into the user session. The feature is relatively new and was only fully implemented after the 22.04 release iirc.

[LAfricain]

I'm interresting about the language selector, (I want to change the system language, french or english...) It was possible with lightdm-greeter-settings.
I'll test tomorrow, but I already tried with /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas without result

[LAfricain]

@sunweaver can you give me more info about the file to modify? I tried with /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/30_ubuntu-mate.gschema.override as I said in #13
Edit: Actually it's working for the background, but not for the language applet.
I add this 'org.ayatana.indicator.language', but I'm probably missing something.

[ericmarceau-rogers]

I expect any action run as root to be performed, without question.

If I run dconf-editor as root (as one would always expect to), then any configuration changes impacting lightdm / arctica-greeter should be applied.

Unless I am on an enterprise system having some complex Managed Access Control, I expect root to have full privileges to accomplish anything, at all times, especially for a desktop/notebook/mobile device.

To suggest otherwise for a personal desktop machine does not fit the paradigm of root's full control over the full-scope environment on a single independant host.