How to change the gdm theme in Arch?

[viking60]

Well the boring login screen is solved (sort of). It is not solved by a different theme. You pick different themes under Decoration, to alter further. But the whole thing altered by a theme is unresolved.
I managed to make my login screen look pretty good tho...

[dedanna1029]

Yeah, but all I want to do is change the theme on the whole. God knows I've installed enough of them to do so with. What's the use, when I can't do it. I don't want to change the background, I don't want to change the "Decoration". I want to change the theme, and if you'll notice, the "Decoration" is grayed out too on my gdm2setup anyway. Unresolved, and I'm sticking with it. It's what I said in my original post too.

Edit: Must correct myself here. It's "Accessibility" that's grayed out, not "Decoration". However, "Decoration" doesn't do me much good. /edit

[viking60]

Just to make sure I did understand you right. You are not talking about the right click on the desktop themes?

[dedanna1029]

No. I'm talking about the gdm themes. Even sent a screenshot earlier in the thread.

[dedanna1029]

Hahahaha I didn't have to add it to the menu, either. It put it right there in System-->Administration.

However, this still doesn't resolve the original issue...





Dammit!! The one thing I wanted!!!

In mandriva, look up gdm-themes and gdm-more-themes. There's others too in there. Arch doesn't appear to have much for gdm at all.

[viking60]

Yes it looks like it is a bit early for that. I guess we have to wait for a fix.

[dedanna1029]

No, what needs to happen, is the devels need to get up off their arses and make a way to install, and use, those packages (gdm-themes, gdm-more-themes, etc.). And, build the *real* login manager that is supposed to come with gnome (almost every other distro i know of has this). And, make them to where they work together like they're supposed to; Login Manager, themes, the works.

[dedanna1029]

This is one of the themes I need. Wondering if I download it how I could install it, and then on top of that, how would I switch to using it.

Still looking for the other one.

Edit: Here is the other one. Basically the same as the other one, just a bit different.

Edit #2: Getting a bit closer. Just a tad. - Wondering how I'd modify that file (gdm is not failing on logout; but I'm thinking that's the file I could modify to make this thing do what I want?)

[dedanna1029]

Hey, Boss, Check it out:
And, I totally completely spaced what I was gonna say after that... hhmmm.

[viking60]

Hmm The commands did not work out of the box so i had to enter this command as root:

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cp -t /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/ /usr/share/applications/gnome-appearance-properties.desktop /usr/share/applications/gconf-editor.desktop

I logged out and voila there i could edit the theme.
When you are finished editing the theme you do not want the edit mask to pop up every time you log in so you have to remove it after you are happy:

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rm /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/gnome-appearance-properties.desktop /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/gconf-editor.desktop


That seems to work - I have to fugure out how to add the new themes now......
Hmm. I wonder if it would hel adding myself to the gdm group seems my rights are somewhat limited:

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 sudo gpasswd -a viking gdm 

If it does not help I can always remove myself with:

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 sudo gpasswd -d viking gdm 

Lets see if it helps......
I can change a lot but not install themes.
To solve your problem you probably need to install gdm-old from AUR. That will make gdm2setup work with all the tabs.

[dedanna1029]

Is that tried though? And known to work? I almost did install it yesterday, but then backed out.

Thanks for the tips btw.

Edit: Don't think it's going to work. If I do this, which conflicts with current gdm, then there goes a lot of gnome.

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==> gdm-old conflicts:
 - gdm-2.30.4-1

<snip>

==> Finished making: gdm-old 2.20.11-1 (Sat Jul 31 08:21:01 MDT 2010)
==> WARNING: gdm-old conflicts with those packages:
 - gdm
==> Do you want to remove them with "pacman -Rd" ?  [y/N]
==> -----------------------------------------------------
==>
You are not allowed to launch /usr/bin/pacman with sudo
Please enter root password
Password:
su: incorrect password
Password:

Remove (1): gdm-2.30.4-1 [6.96 MB]

Total Removed Size:   6.96 MB

Do you want to remove these packages? [Y/n] y
(1/1) removing gdm                                 [######################] 100%
warning: /etc/gdm/custom.conf saved as /etc/gdm/custom.conf.pacsave
userdel: user gdm is currently logged in
groupdel: cannot remove the primary group of user 'gdm'
error: command failed to execute correctly

==> Continue installing gdm-old ? [Y/n]
==> [v]iew package contents [c]heck package with namcap
==> ---------------------------------------------------
==> n

[dedanna1029]

Install gdm2setup:

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yaourt gdm2setup

FYI I modified your code further. You had yaourt -S gdm2setup. -S only applies to pacman, and doesn't apply to yaourt. Thanks. ~Moderator

^^^