-I set the lock screen image with the LightDM Greeter Setting manager(see screenshot). However, the change did not succeed, had rebooted per instructions.
Any alternative method to accomplish a lock screen image change in Mate DE?
A quote from the thread describing the procedure:
You’ll have to put the picture into /usr/share/backgrounds somewhere, for example - then point to this location.
You say Mate, but tagged the thread XFCE ?
Which is it?
Taking your title for face value - the mate edition uses slick-greeter,
→ configured in → /etc/lightdm/slick-greeter.conf
There is a GUI for configuring the greeter
→ Click on Menu
→ type login to locate
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To note: images from the system must be used, as LightDM can’t access users’ home directories.
It probably has got the same “limitation” - that the background pictures cannot reside in the users $HOME - which is likely the issue @tnthomas encountered.
It’s my speculation - I don’t know this for a fact.
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Typically, for an image to be used as a background for a login screen, that image should be available to all users (in a multi-user environment); and Linux is that, despite being most commonly used by single users.
There is rarely any mechanism in place to provide each user the opportunity to use their own specific background image for the login screen, so the most common is for it to be shared.
/usr/share/backgrounds is (logically) available to all users. Yet this might only be useful when there is a user logged in, which is why I suggest the following possibilities.
If a system has a shared partition or Public folder (with approprate permissions), these would be available to all users; and a path to an image in these locations would arguably be suitable.
Each system has its own idiosyncrasies, and frankly I don’t remember exactly how I did it with LightDM, but these paths are a decent rule of thumb.
Another method (macOS) is to find where the image is cached, and physically exchange that cached image with your own.
That’s my 2 cents. If any of this inspires you to find a solution, I’ll expect whatever change is leftover – or a 
– Cheers.
Looking at my Bash history I see that I did cp the image to /usr/share/backgrounds. I then used the LightDM GTK Greeter to point to the image.
Check whether the image is really there:
ls -hl /usr/share/backgrounds
Check whether the path in /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf really reflects what you did through the GUI:
cat /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf
should look like this:
[greeter]
background = /usr/share/backgrounds/yourimagename.jpg
...
That is also the way you can change it without the GUI - edit the file in any text editor, edit that path.
One more thing:
the screenshot in your first post shows the GUI to change the lightdm login screen,
but the title of your post says that you wanted to change the background image of the lock screen -
these are two different things …
If the OP could shed some light on this conundrum, it might of benefit.
Check which lightdm greeter is configured in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
grep 'greeter-session' /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
If response shows
# greeter-session = Session to load for greeter
greeter-session=lightdm-slick-greeter
use lightdm-settings instead of lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings to configure background image
pkexec lightdm-settings
and remove Xfce lightdm packages
pamac remove lightdm-gtk-greeter lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings
Manjaro Xfce ISOs include lightdm-gtk-greeter and lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings
But Mate, Cinnamon, i3 and Budgie include lightdm-slick-greeter and lightdm-settings (screenshots on forum.endeavouros)
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Yes, working in Mate, but I pointed to a similar post that happened to concern XFCE. Since I do have a LightDM GTK+ Greeter settings feature already I tried using it. I have manually copied the image I want to use for the lockscreen to /usr/share/backgrounds, as well a a couple sub-directories there, still without the desired result.
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I have to leave the house, but when I return I’ll focus on editing with lightdm-slick-greeter.
If you use pkexec lightdm-settings it will create this file, though there might be more in it (depends on what you change).
/etc/lightdm/slick-greeter.conf
[Greeter]
background=/usr/share/backgrounds/mushroom-moon.jpg
This will change the background for the login screen. If you want to change the background for the lock screen, you can do it through the screensaver.
Classic and Compact menus:
System → Preferences → Look and Feel → Screensaver → Background picture for the lock screen (at the bottom of the window)
Brisk menu:
Preferences → Screensaver → Background picture for the lock screen
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I noticed that feature on my Archman machine, but not on this one that’s running Manjaro.
Found it! Don’t know how I missed it. Thanks!
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