Remote web server - CHAPTER 10 PERSONALIZING UBUNTU: GETTING EVERYTHING JUST
CHAPTER 10 PERSONALIZING UBUNTU: GETTING EVERYTHING JUST RIGHT 149 Personalizing Login Options You can even personalize the login screen under Ubuntu. This is known technically as the GNOME Display Manager, or GDM. To access its configuration options, select System . Administration . Login Screen Setup. The dialog box has eight tabs: General: In the Local drop-down list, you can choose the type of login screen: Themed Greeter, which is to say one that includes the Ubuntu graphic, or GTK+ Greeter, which is a basic login box into which you can type your details. By unchecking the Use Default Welcome boxes, you can type your own Welcome and Remote Welcome text (the remote text is what appears if someone logs in graphically via GDM across a network; it isn t something you should worry about). The Automatic Login heading lets you do away with the login box completely and go straight to the desktop from bootup. Simply put a check in the box and provide the login username. This presents obvious security issues, but if you re the only person using the computer and if it s located in a secure location, you might want to choose this option. The Timed Login option lets you select a user who will be logged in by default after a given period. This is useful if you want to present the opportunity to log in as a different user but also want to have the failsafe of logging in automatically, too. GTK+ Greeter: Here, you can change the appearance of the simple GTK+ Greeter that will appear if you chose the relevant option on the General tab. You can change the picture by clicking the Browse button, or get rid of it completely by clicking No Logo. You can also alter the background so that there s a picture or color. Themed Greeter: The Themed Greeter is the default under Ubuntu, and it makes the standard login page appear. You can select from a couple of other themes from the list on the left. Particularly handy is the Happy GNOME with Browser option, which shows a list of all users on your system during login. To log in, just click the appropriate entry and type the necessary password. Clicking the Install New Theme button lets you install a Themed Greeter theme from disk. You can download these from http://art.gnome.org. Security: This tab lets you alter login settings that might present a security risk to your system. For example, if the Happy GNOME with Browser option is activated in the Themed Greeter tab, you can activate the Face Browser, which will show a picture on the login screen. This is considered a security risk, because it removes the need for people to type in their usernames, thus potentially handing valuable information to hackers. You can also activate the X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP) for GDM, which will let users log in graphically using GDM from a remote computer (this requires the remote system to be specially configured). XServer: This tab lets you specify settings that can be passed to the X server when it s started by GDM. In most cases, you can ignore this tab. Accessibility: Here, you can allow activation of the GNOME Assistive Technology modules (see sidebar on following page). You can also have GDM make sounds when various events occur, such as a bad login. This can help partially sighted people. XDMCP: If you activated XDMCP for GDM in the Security tab, this tab lets you fine-tune various settings, such as the network port it listens on as well as the maximum number of remote sessions. Unless you have specifically activated XDMCP, you can ignore this tab.