Manjaro should not install sddm.conf

I have just installed manjaro from the iso and got an \etc\sddm.conf file.

However this is problematic: it is legacy and takes precedence over anything in \etc\sddm.conf.d making it impossible to install local changes.

I think the sddm developers say “If anyone is still installing a /etc/sddm.conf they should stop”.

Strange. I always understood that the .d items would take preference. Of course, having the same option in both uncommented would be less than desirable, regardless.

However, the documentation does indeed spell it out differently:

This might simply be poor wording, but it does indicate that sddm.conf has the highest priority.

That’s not the way it is on my system. I set up autologin a few weeks ago and this file was created:

/etc/sddm.conf.d/kde_settings.conf

[Autologin]
Relogin=false
Session=plasmawayland
User=scotty

[General]
HaltCommand=/usr/bin/systemctl poweroff
Numlock=on
RebootCommand=/usr/bin/systemctl reboot

[Theme]
Current=breath
CursorSize=28
CursorTheme=Bibata-Rainbow-Modern
Font=Noto Sans,10,-1,0,400,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1

[Users]
MaximumUid=60513
MinimumUid=1000

So, the drop-in configuration in /etc/sddm.conf.d/ definitely takes precedence over the default /etc/sddm.conf file (at least it does on my system).

2 Likes

Hi @callegar,

If this is true, it seems to have been installed from a future, so far yet unreleased version of Manjaro.

However, considering time travel is yet to be invented, I suspect you’ve got your paths confused, which is a much simpler, more likely explanation.

I both /etc/sddm.conf and /etc/sddm.conf.d with the following files:

drwxr-xr-x root root 4.0 KB Wed Oct 16 12:36:31 2024 .
drwxr-xr-x root root  12 KB Sat Nov 16 11:21:53 2024 ..
.rw-r--r-- root root  23 B  Wed May  1 23:09:53 2024 00_manjaro_settings.conf
.rw-r--r-- root root 278 B  Wed Oct 16 12:36:31 2024 kde_settings.conf
.rw-r--r-- root root  35 B  Sat Jul 20 08:30:11 2024 rootless-x11.conf
.rw-r--r-- root root  31 B  Wed May  1 23:09:53 2024 virtualkeyboard.conf
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The iso-profiles repo for kde installs the file via the desktop-overlay folder.

I created a question at the repo

2 Likes

May be, this is only the case if there are contradictory values ​​in both files.

In the event of a contradiction, the values ​​in sddm.conf overwrite the other value in sddm.conf.d/*.conf

If all values ​​in sddm.conf are commented out, there is no contradiction. Then what is in sddm.conf.d/*.conf applies

4 Likes

I understand now. So, if for example I created the file /etc/sddm.conf.d/no-session-remember.conf with the following line:

RememberLastSession=false

to override the default /etc/sddm.conf file’s value:

RememberLastSession=true

then the next time I booted up SDDM (if I wasn’t using autologin) would still remember that my PC’s last session was Plasma Wayland, because the default value of “true” would override my drop-in config file’s value of “false”?

Please don’t use Microsoft-style notations for UNIX-style paths. In UNIX, the backslash is an escape character, not a directory separator.

You are definitely right, too used to

You are right! Either I am too used to type the backslash from LaTeX or I have copied and pasted from someone making the mistake!

2 Likes

This is exactly what is going on. The problem is that the sddm.conf file installed in Manjaro sets almost everythinig, including a nasty HideUsers= that makes setting HideUsers from files in sddm.conf.d impossible.

My suggestion is that either Manjaro does not ship sddm.conf or it ships it with just a comment noticing that it is a legacy file and that the configuration entries can be found in files in sddm.conf.d.

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Please post contents of /etc/sddm.conf to confirm source of issue

If you can demonstrate that commenting out configuration works as expected, it may get better attention from Manjaro

1 Like

Calamares still ships /etc/sddm.conf as its config file: [displaymanager] Add SDDM config-file setting · calamares/calamares@25ab3f7 · GitHub. I can look into other distros on how they manage SDDM.

@callegar please check if this fixes your issue: Release 202411191051 · manjaro/release-review · GitHub