Bug#470576: gdm: greeter does not have initial focus with xinerama

[Andre Colomb]

Package: gdm
Version: 2.20.3-1
Severity: normal

Hi!

I have a Xinerama setup with two monitors. When gdm starts, it centers
the greeter window on the left monitor. However, the mouse cursor is by
default centered across the whole screen area, so it winds up outside of
the greeter window.

Therefore, gdm does not get focus initially and I have to move the mouse
over the greeter before entering my user name. That is VERY annoying,
and people without a mouse (or who cannot use one) are locked out of
their X system.

I couldn't think of any nice solution yet, maybe there is a way to grab
the focus from within gdm? It's all kind of hard without a window
manager running.

Open for any ideas, I'm even offering to try and implement them.

Regards, Andre

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.24 (PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gdm depends on:
ii  adduser                    3.105         add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]      1.5.19        Debian configuration management sy
ii  gksu                       2.0.0-5       graphical frontend to su
ii  gnome-session              2.20.3-2      The GNOME 2 Session Manager
ii  icewm [x-window-manager]   1.2.33-1      wonderful Win95-OS/2-Motif-like wi
ii  libart-2.0-2               2.3.20-1      Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0                1.20.0-1      The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libattr1                   1:2.4.41-1    Extended attribute shared library
ii  libc6                      2.7-6         GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2                  1.4.14-1      The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3                1.1.2-1       simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2           0.74-1        simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdmx1                    1:1.0.2-2     X11 Distributed Multihead extensio
ii  libfontconfig1             2.5.0-2       generic font configuration library
ii  libglade2-0                1:2.6.2-1     library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0               2.14.6-1      The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0          2.20.1.1-1    A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgtk2.0-0                2.12.5-2      The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libpam-modules             0.99.7.1-5    Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam-runtime             0.99.7.1-5    Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii  libpam0g                   0.99.7.1-5    Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpango1.0-0              1.18.4-1      Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  librsvg2-2                 2.20.0-1      SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  librsvg2-common            2.20.0-1      SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  libselinux1                2.0.15-2+b1   SELinux shared libraries
ii  libwrap0                   7.6.dbs-14    Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  libx11-6                   2:1.0.3-7     X11 client-side library
ii  libxau6                    1:1.0.3-2     X11 authorisation library
ii  libxdmcp6                  1:1.0.2-2     X11 Display Manager Control Protoc
ii  libxext6                   1:1.0.3-2     X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxi6                     2:1.1.3-1     X11 Input extension library
ii  libxinerama1               1:1.0.2-1     X11 Xinerama extension library
ii  libxml2                    2.6.31.dfsg-1 GNOME XML library
ii  lsb-base                   3.1-24        Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  metacity [x-window-manager 1:2.20.2-1    A lightweight GTK2 based Window Ma
ii  twm [x-window-manager]     1:1.0.3-3     Tab window manager
ii  xfwm4 [x-window-manager]   4.4.2-1       window manager of the Xfce project
ii  xterm [x-terminal-emulator 232-1         X terminal emulator

Versions of packages gdm recommends:
ii  dialog             1.1-20071028-3        Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
ii  gdm-themes         0.5.1                 Themes for the GNOME Display Manag
ii  whiptail           0.52.2-11.1           Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
ii  xserver-xephyr     2:1.4.1~git20080131-1 nested X server
ii  xserver-xorg       1:7.3+10              the X.Org X server
ii  zenity             2.20.1-1              Display graphical dialog boxes fro

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