Posts Tagged ‘lightdm’
Set lightdm wallpaper that is independant of the user’s wallpaper (Ubuntu/Linux Mint)
Using lightdm, the wallpaper that is shown is usually the one used by the selected user. If you want to change this or just set a static wallpaper for your login screen, there are a few possibilities to do that.
1. Method
The first one is to make your wallpaper inaccessible to others, letting lightdm fall back to its default wallpaper. For this method, dconf-tools must be installed. If it isn’t installed on your system yet, install it with
sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
With these tools you can easily configure lightdm – however you cannot do so in the GUI since you must be logged in as lightdm user. Do so by entering following into a terminal:
sudo xhost +SI:localuser:lightdm
sudo su lightdm -s /bin/bash
Now you can edit any of lightdm’s settings with the command line – you can use the dconf GUI as reference for the paths and variable names (the dconf path to the lightdm unity greeter configuration is com>canonical>unity greeter). Set the background picture with
gsettings set com.canonical.unity-greeter background ‘/usr/share/backgrounds/orsomewhereelse.png’
Replace the path I use with the one to the wallpaper of your choice – it must be closed in quotation marks. You can also change the background color to black (x000000) or some other neutral color.
What happens in the login screen now is that the dconf wallpaper blinks up for a second and is then replaced by your wallpaper. To counter that, you must make your wallpaper inaccessible to other users. To do that, log in to your account again and open a terminal. Change the ownership to you instead of root if you need to (wallpapers in /usr/share… usually don’t belong to you for example). Replace my username (howtoforge)and my group (howtoforge) with yours:
sudo chown howtoforge:howtoforge /usr/share/backgrounds/orsomewhereelse.png
Now right-click the wallpaper and go to the Permissions tab in the Properties menu. Set the rights of Others to None. Lightdm won’t be able to access your wallpaper any longer, so it falls back to the one you specified in dconf-tools.
2. Method
The other possibility is to run
id -u
to find out your user ID and afterwards run (replace [your id] with the ID the previous command spit out (without brackets) and the path I used with the one to the wallpaper you want lightdm to display):
dbus-send –system –print-reply –dest=org.freedesktop.Accounts /org/freedesktop/Accounts/User[your id] org.freedesktop.Accounts.User.SetBackgroundFile string:/path/to/wallpaper.jpg
This command has to be repeated every time you change your wallpaper and only replaces the wallpaper for one user. You can decide whether you like this method or the previous more.
Change Ubuntu logo on lightdm login manager
If you install lightdm on distributions other than Ubuntu you may want to have the Ubuntu logo in the lower left corner removed or altered. This can be done easily by editing the original picture file which is located in /usr/share/unity-greeter/ (remember to open the folder as administrator, or do it right from a terminal as root).
The file you want to edit is logo.png. You can either rename it, so it doesn’t show up on login anymore (for example, rename it to logo.png.bak – if you want it back, just remove the new extension again), or edit it with a graphical editor right away so that it reads something more appropriate to your distribution or login screen.
Disable guest login-entry on lightdm (Ubuntu’s login manager)
Ubuntu’s login manager, lightdm, offers a guest login option by default.
Most of you won’t use it anyway, so why keep it at all? You can disable that entry in the lightdm configuration file, which is /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf. Open it from a terminal using
sudo gedit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
At the bottom of the file, insert following line:
allow-guest=false
Afterwards, restart your machine and the guest login option will be gone. To bring it back, just erase the line again or set it to true.
Install the Ubuntu login screen on Linux Mint
Version 13 of Linux Mint (Maya) uses the MDM login manager that requires you to enter the username of the user you want to log in to in addition to your password which might annoy a few people. Although it is possible to display a user list, the way of achieving this is quite circumstantial and involves editing an XML file which isn’t the user-friendliest way.
Instead, you can also install the same login screen Ubuntu uses, which is lightdm:
To install it, just open a terminal and enter following:
sudo apt-get install lightdm
After the installation, you will be asked which of the installed login managers you would like to use, the original one (mdm) or the new one you just installed (lightdm) – pick lightdm here by selecting it and hitting Enter:
The next time you have to log in, you’ll see your new login screen!
Change Log-In Screen Background Image on Ubuntu Linux
If you want to make your Ubuntu installation a little less purple and orange, but don’t see a solution that covers the change of log-in screen background picture change, try Simple Lightdm Manager. It is a tool that lets you turn the log-in screen into any image you have on your computer. To install, open a terminal and enter the following commands (adding repository, updating sources, installation):
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:claudiocn/slm
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simple-lightdm-manager
Afterwards open SLM and browse for an image you want to use:
Additionally you can alter the logo that is displayed on the log-in screen’s bottom left corner.
Be aware though, that this does not work with images which are located in encrypted file systems!