GDM login screen not shown after following Quick Docs on F44 (GNOME 50)

Ask Fedora
1

I found a problem when following the Quick Docs article “Displaying a User Prompt on the GNOME Login Screen” on F44 Workstation (GNOME 50):

Problem:
After a fresh installation of F44 Workstation on a VM, I followed the “Disable User List” procedure (Steps 1-4) in the above Quick Docs article.
This resulted in the GDM login screen not being displayed, and the Greeter desktop being exposed instead. In this state, the terminal becomes unusable and no input is accepted.
Note that this problem did not occur on F43 (GNOME 49) or earlier.

Recovery:
Log in via tty with Ctrl+Alt+F3, then run:

sudo rm /etc/dconf/profile/gdm
sudo dconf update
reboot

Cause:
The following entry is required in the /etc/dconf/profile/gdm editing procedure described in the
Quick Docs:
file-db:/usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults
Adding this entry prevents the problem from occurring.
This entry appears to have become necessary starting with GNOME 50.
Note that the GNOME documentation already includes this file-db entry:

Suggestion:
The Quick Docs article may need to be updated. Either:

  1. Modify the /etc/dconf/profile/gdm editing procedure (Step 3) to include the file-db entry, or
  2. Remove Step 3 entirely, since Fedora’s default /usr/share/dconf/profile/gdm already contains the necessary entries.
3

Please feel free to make a pull request of your changes. On the top right corner you have an edit button on which you can open the git file and propose an pull request.

It is really grate reporting changes, which helps to be up to date with the Manuals. Thanks a lot.

4

Thanks for the advice.

I went with the second approach and created a pull request here:

This is my very first time contributing to the documentation, so I’m honestly a bit nervous and just hope I didn’t mess anything up.