Gnome Login Menu On Wrong Screen

loginctl indicates that GDM session is terminated automatically in several seconds if you switch back to your own one, so there’s usually no need to terminate it manually to apply the settings.

1 Like

Can you please provide a command to see this? I don’t know how and am interested.

1 Like

Here it is, though I’m not sure where the GDM session timeout is specified:

$ loginctl; sleep 10; loginctl
SESSION  UID USER     SEAT  TTY  
      2 1000 vgaetera seat0 tty2 
     25    0 root           pts/1
     c6   42 gdm      seat0 tty1 

3 sessions listed.
SESSION  UID USER     SEAT  TTY  
      2 1000 vgaetera seat0 tty2 
     25    0 root           pts/1

2 sessions listed.
1 Like

Ok, thanks. Another indication (indirect as well) is the reply to the terminate-user command you’ve posted earlier, or to the

$ sudo loginctl user-status gdm
Failed to get user: User ID 42 is not logged in or lingering
2 Likes

I just tried again and it still doesn’t work. I don’t understand it as the after the login the menu bar is correctly displayed on the external monitor. I played a bit around with the primary setting in the ~gdm/.config/monitors.xml file but the behavior is always the same. the login screen is displayed on the notebook display. Might there be a setting overruling the monitors.xml file? such as some x configuration file or so?

The waylandenable line is commented out:

➜  .config cat /etc/gdm/custom.conf | grep Wayland
#WaylandEnable=false
1 Like

By default there isn’t, as it works for me and @vgaetera at least. Also I found it as a proper solution several Fedora versions ago, and it worked for me ever since.

So basically it looks like gdm ignores monitors.xml file in your case. You can try to verifiy it by playing, for example, with scale settings in the file (changing scale works for me).

Is it a fresh F30 install or have you upgraded?

Do you, by any chance, use proprietary NVidia driver?

One other thought. You can try the following.

  1. Uncomment #WaylandEnable=false in /etc/gdm/custom.conf – to force GDM to start in xorg, not wayland.

  2. Login into “Gnome on Xorg” session.

  3. Delete and recreate your monitors.xml, then copy it to ~gdm – as you did earlier.

  4. I think (not sure) that under xorg you’ll have to reboot or at least logout to apply the new monitor.xml.

Basically, monitors.xml under for xorg and gdm is different (primarily “connector” fields would be different for the same monitors). If you generate your monitors.xml in a wayland session, it won’t apply to Xorg session and vice versa. Also there can be cases when gdm runs under Xorg though it’s configured to run under wayland.

So maybe (a) your gdm session runs under Xorg, and/or (b) monitors.xml will be applied correctly when you force gdm to run under Xorg. You’ll have additional info and will decide how to proceed from there.

There’s useful general info in Arch wiki

I tried but couldn’t find the info on how to log/debug monitors.xml parsing/usage.

1 Like

Thank you I really appreciate your help on this issue. I dont understand why it doesnt work for me. I think your assumption regarding gdm ignoring my monitors.xml file is correct. When I change the file directly nothing happens after I logout and login again. Changing settings i.e. in the gnome-control-center display will change the content of the monitors.xml file. also within the desktop environment everything is correct. Its just that the login screen doesnt respect the settings. The F30 is not fresh. I installed F28 and upgraded since then. I dont think i have a properietary NVidia driver but I might be wrong. How can I check that?

Also I disabled Wayland used Xorg deleted and recreated the monitors.xml copied it to ~gdm but that didnt work as well.

1 Like

So at least it seems to be consistently ignored under both Xorg and Wayland.

Then question regarding NVidia is null, moreover, if you had proprietary drivers you would’ve installed them manually ==> you would know you use them.

I have no more ideas. All the questions/bugs I could find regarding monitors.xml being ignored were either about Xorg ↔ Wayland confusion or about some settings in the file which gdm wouldn’t support (such as screen rotation, for example).

That’s totally as expected. Your own graphical settings (“within the desktop environment”) are stored in a configuration specific to your user account. Login screen runs under it’s own user (named gdm), so it has it’s own graphical settings stored under gdm’s account.

Yep, but these changes are again specific to your user account and doesn’t apply to other users including gdm user.

This is why you’ve had to manually copy monitors.xml to gdm’s home directory – so that settings you’ve configured for yourself could be applied for gdm (on the login screen).

They’re been ignored… the question is why – and sadly I don’t know what else to try to pinpoint this “why”.

1 Like

One more question. I have no notebook to check, I have a desktop with two monitors.

On the login screen – is the second monitor actually on and displaying sonmething? It should have a grey background and you should be able to move your mouse pointer to it, and see your mouse pointer moving.

1 Like

Yes, the second monitor is on and has this grey texture as background.

1 Like

Ok ) then I have no idea how to debug this. Maybe someone more knowledgeable will chime in.

You can try to create a bugreport, maybe even you should. Problem is, even if it’s bug (and not some configs remained from F28, let’s say), it isn’t easily reproducible by other people (it works as intended for me and others), and as such would be hard for developers to act upon. But maybe they’ll tell you what information you need to provide and how to get it to make the bugreport more useful.

1 Like

I finally figured it out. I had some experimental gnome feature running.

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"

I’ve configured this when I set up the notebook and forgot about it. It turns out that when I disable this setting and apply the above steps one more time I get the login screen on my external monitor. This is kind of embarrassing. Anyways thanks a lot for your support.

4 Likes

Note that the GDM user has its own dconf, so if you want to change his settings, it should be like this:

sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-date true
1 Like

@s1las, congratulations on resolving your issue, I would be hard pressed to guess these two could be connected.

Also, if you can reproduce your problem by enabling this feature, then this would be very useful bug to file. Fractional scaling is much asked for feature right now, and many people can stumble with their two-monitor setup just as you did. You filing the bug would help developers notice it and probably fixing it )

2 Likes

Cool I didnt know that.

1 Like

When I find some time I’ll check if I can reproduce it. Not sure if my system is a good reference for filing bugs because I upgraded from earlier Fedora versions and it is therefore not in a perfectly fresh state. Do you think it would still make sense to file a bug if its reproducible?

1 Like

Yes, absolutely. If for no other reason then (even judging just from Ask Fedora) quite a few people upgrade their systems and don’t reinstall every time – as you do. And again, upgrading is not some hack, it’s officially allowed and/or endorsed way.

By the way, with scale-monitor-framebuffer unset and all working now – is your external monitor still scaled to 2 and laptop’s screen to 1 (as in monitors.xml you’ve posted earlier)? When I’ve played with changing monitors.xml on the fly (I’ve written about it), I think, I had to set scale to 2 for both my monitors for it to be applied.

1 Like

I tried to replicate the issue but I couldn’t do it. I enabled the scale-monitor-framebuffer again but the login screen stayed on the external monitor. Its a bit strange that I cannot reproduce it but i’m just happy it works now. Regarding your questions about the scaling. Currently the scaling is set to 1 on both but I switched to I3 and dont use Gnome Desktop anymore. Just the login screen. But I remember when I played arround that with Wayland I could use different scalings but not with Xorg.

1 Like

Then I think we’ll leave it at this and will return to it when (or if) the need arises )

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.