Bug#261786: gdmgreeter diagnostics go nowhere

[Matthew Sanderson]

Package: gdm
Version: 2.6.0.3-1
Severity: important

GDMGreeter prints diagnostics to its stderr. However, when it is being run as a sub-process of gdm, at the time that it 
prints these diagnostics, its stderr is opened to /dev/null. Therefore the diagnostics are never seen by a human; and 
therefore, diagnosing problems with gdmgreeter is much harder than it need be.

Suggest either:
a. gdmgreeter should keep a pipe open to 'gdm', and should print its diagnostics to this pipe. GDM should then read 
gdmgreeter's diagnostics from the other end of the pipe, and then handle them in exactly the same way as gdm handles 
its own diagnostics (eg by writing them to a log file, sending them to syslog, whatever); or,
b. gdmgreeter should handle its own diagnostics, and should be capable (at least) of writing them to a log file and of 
sending them to syslog; or,
c. it should be documented that the proper way of diagnosing problems with gdmgreeter is to run gdm under 'strace -f' 
or gdb or something. In this case, gdmgreeter printing anything to stderr (which is /dev/null) is a waste of CPU time 
by gdmgreeter.

Generally, either diagnostic messages should be made to go somewhere useful, or if it is decided that they will never 
go anywhere useful then there is no  point printing them, so they should be removed.

Some or all of this may apply to sub-processes of gdm other than gdmgreeter (gdmchooser?).

Cheers,

--m@

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.7
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages gdm depends on:
hi  adduser                     3.49         Add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf                     1.4.29       Debian configuration management sy
ii  dpkg                        1.10.15      Package maintenance system for Deb
ii  gksu                        1.2.0-2      graphical frontend to su
ii  gnome-session               2.4.2-2      The GNOME 2 Session Manager
ii  gnome-terminal [x-terminal- 2.2.2-4      The GNOME 2 terminal emulator appl
ii  libart-2.0-2                2.3.16-5     Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0                 1.6.1-2      The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libattr1                    2.4.15-1     Extended attribute shared library
ii  libbonobo2-0                2.6.2-4      Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libbonoboui2-0              2.6.1-1      The Bonobo UI library
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-11 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libgconf2-4                 2.6.2-1      GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglade2-0                 1:2.4.0-1    Library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0                2.4.2-1      The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome2-0                 2.6.1-6      The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0           2.6.1.1-2    A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgnomeui-0                2.6.1.1-3    The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgnomevfs2-0              2.6.1.1-3    The GNOME virtual file-system libr
ii  libgtk2.0-0                 2.4.3-1      The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libice6                     4.3.0-7      Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  liborbit2                   1:2.10.2-1.1 libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
hi  libpam-modules              0.76-7       Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam-runtime              0.76-15      Runtime support for the PAM librar
hi  libpam0g                    0.76-7       Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpango1.0-0               1.4.0-4      Layout and rendering of internatio
hi  libpopt0                    1.7-2        lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii  librsvg2-2                  2.7.2-3      SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  libselinux1                 1.14-2       SELinux shared libraries
ii  libsm6                      4.3.0-7      X Window System Session Management
ii  libwrap0                    7.6-ipv6.1-3 Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  libx11-6                    4.3.0-7      X Window System protocol client li
ii  libxext6                    4.3.0-7      X Window System miscellaneous exte
ii  libxml2                     2.6.10-3     GNOME XML library
ii  metacity [x-window-manager] 1:2.4.55-2   A lightweight GTK2 based Window Ma
ii  xbase-clients               4.3.0-7      miscellaneous X clients
ii  xlibs                       4.3.0-7      X Window System client libraries m
ii  xterm [x-terminal-emulator] 4.2.1-3      X terminal emulator
hi  zlib1g                      1:1.2.1-4    compression library - runtime

-- debconf information:
  gdm/daemon_name: /usr/bin/gdm
  shared/default-x-display-manager: gdm