Re: New GDM Login Theme

[Ray Strode <rstrode redhat com>]

Hi,
> Ray Strode wrote:
> > If you want to use the new theme, you can
> > enable it by running /usr/sbin/gdmsetup and selecting the "Fedora
> > Bubbles" theme.  
> BTW, is there a particular reason why gdmsetup was removed from the 
> menus, or is there a hint to mere mortals on how to find it?
No, not that I know of.  It looks like a bug (the Categories in the
desktop file look wrong).

Matthias filed a bug today here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=178461


> A more relevant suggestion though... would it be possible to pull info 
> from "About Me" to display owner information on the gdm screen.  I've 
> been thinking a lot about laptop security lately due to a number of 
> thefts we've had, and I want to make it as complicated as possible for 
> thieves to remove owner info from the unit.  We're going to start 
> locking the BIOS so you can't reinstall the OS without a password and 
> then adding a custom boot-image in the BIOS that says "This laptop 
> stolen from..."
It's an interesting idea, although it may have privacy issues.  Can you
file an upstream bug report (http://bugzilla.gnome.org) requesting the
feature?

One thing you can do, that may (or may not) be good enough for your
needs is run a program in the /etc/X11/gdm/Init/Default
(or /etc/X11/gdm/Init/:0) script.  This program will get run when the
login screen loads up.  You could display a message box with the
relevant information, e.g.,

zenity --info --text="This machine belongs to <b><big>$(getent passwd
500 | awk -F: '{print $5}')</big></b>.  Unauthorized access is
prohibited"

or you could display an image of the person who owns the laptop, maybe.

--Ray Strode