8/12/2017 LightDM - Debian Wiki

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Contents
1. System-wide configuration

1. Viewing current configuration

2. Enable autologin

3. Enable user list

4. Change the greeter's background

2. User configuration
3. See also

LightDM is a cross-desktop Display Manager. It was built as a relatively

light-weight and highly customizable alternative to GDM. It's developed at
Canonical by Robert Ancell and all contributors are required to assign
the their copyright to Canonical through a WikiPedia: Contributor License
Agreement that allows proprietarization.

No Gnome dependencies
Uses webkit to render themes
Supports Gtk and Qt
Highly customizable ( basic gtk theme, unity theme in Ubuntu
Precise)

LightDM was introduced in Wheezy, it's stable enough for use also in
Jessie and Sid.

To install lightdm in Wheezy, run as root

aptitude install lightdm

System-wide configuration

LightDM configuration file is found at /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf. Making a

backup of the original configuration file is recommended.

Alternatively, create /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/ and place your

configuration files there.

https://wiki.debian.org/LightDM 1/3
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To change the current default Display Manager, run

dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

If you're new to LightDM, it's recommended to have GDM, slim or another

Display Manager installed as a backup.

Viewing current configuration

To view effective configuration, run

/usr/sbin/lightdm --show-config

This will show current settings, with the configuration files these settings
were read from.

Enable autologin

Look up these lines in lightdm configuration file, uncomment them and

customize to your preference.

[SeatDefaults]
#autologin-user=
#autologin-user-timeout=0

Note that this has to be in the [?SeatDefaults] section, not the [LightDM]
section.

Enable user list

By default, LightDM is configured so that the user should enter login name
and password. Login name is considered sensitive information.

It is possible to provide the user with selection of available user accounts.

The most recently used login name will be selected in the list. The user still
has to enter password to login. This provides useful compromise between
security and convenience for a single-user desktop system.

https://wiki.debian.org/LightDM 2/3
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To enable user list, place the following settings into

/usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/01_my.conf:

[SeatDefaults]
greeter-hide-users=false

Change the greeter's background

Debian's LightDM GTK greeter is configured in

/etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf. There, we find that the
background image points to
/usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-background, which is
a symlink managed by update-alternatives.

So, to change the greeter's background, the best way is to find some
images that you like from /usr/share/images/desktop-base/, then
use update-alternatives to change the desktop-background group:

update-alternatives --config desktop-background

User configuration

LightDM itself has no user configuration. Once you've authenticated with

your username and password, LightDM will run an X session. If you wish
to configure your login environment, you must use the configuration files for
whichever type of X session your system is configured to use. By default,
this will be the Debian Xsession.

See also

DebianPkg: lightdm - Debian packages

DisplayManager
LightDM at freedesktop.org, Launchpad

CategoryBootProcess

https://wiki.debian.org/LightDM 3/3