Recovering your KDM user list icons

From SUSE Wiki

Type: Fix, Application-Specific (KDM)

Tested Versions: 9.3

Further Modifications By: Kamatsu,Rbos

This article has not been tested to work on the latest full release version (i.e 9 or 10, not 10.0 or 10.1) of SUSE Linux.
You can help SUSE Wiki by testing this and updating the article where possible.

After installing SuSE 9.3, your login screen's selectable user icons have disappeared. KDE introduced themes for the KDE login screen, KDM, in version 3.4. The default setup in SuSE 9.3 uses a themed login screen. Unfortunately, themed KDM in KDE 3.4.x does not support the full functionality of the non-themed version, including user lists. Themed KDM does support user lists in KDE 3.5.

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Solution

Either upgrade to KDE 3.5, or configure KDM to not use themes.

If you do not wish to upgrade KDE, then follow these steps to disable themes.

Edit /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager as user root and change the entry

DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME="SUSE"

DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME=""

Then run SuSEconfig to generate a new configuration file, /etc/opt/kde3/share/config/kdm/kdmrc, for KDM.

There are two ways to do this:

1. Use YaST2 sysconfig editor:

Start YaST2
Go to 'System' -> '/etc/sysconfig Editor'
Open: 'Desktop' -> 'Display manager' -> 'DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME'
delete SUSE
Click on finish. This will automatically run SuSEconfig.
Log out of KDE to see if your changes have taken effect.

2. With an editor of your choice. You don't need to start a graphical session as root, just follow these few steps:

Press ALT+F2 -> type konsole --type su -> and press run.
Enter the password for the user root (please note, no * or other signs will be displayed).
Load /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager with your favorite ascii editor.
Change DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME="SUSE" to DISPLAYMANAGER_KDM_THEME="".
After you have made these changes, save the file and exit the editor.
type SuSEconfig --module kdm3 and press Enter.
If there are no error messages, restart kdm to see if your changes have taken effect. Log out of KDE, or type rcxdm restart and press Enter.

If this still does not work, check the /etc/opt/kde3/share/config/kdm directory for a file called kdmrc.SuSEconfig. If this file exists, SuSEconfig determined that someone else edited kdmrc. Instead of overwriting those changes, it wrote out its changes to kdmrc.SuSEconfig. To prevent this from happening in the future, you will need to move kdmrc out of the way and use SuSEconfig to write out a new version. Type in the following commands:

# rm kdmrc.SuSEconfig          get rid of the autogenerated file
# mv kdmrc old_kdmrc           move the current kdmrc out of the way.  If you lose settings, you can copy it back to kdmrc
# SuSEconfig --module kdm3     autogenerate a new kdmrc based on settings in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager

There should now be a new kdmrc file in /etc/opt/kde/share/config/kdm with a current timestamp. Open kdmrc in your favorite ascii editor and search for UseTheme. It should be set to false: