Qingy Is Not GettY / News: Recent posts

Reverted change in stdin management that interfered with DBus.

- Fixed bug introduced in 0.9.7 and triggered when searching for X sessions
outside /etc/X11/Sessions and detected session path is a full path.
Thanks to Riccardo Stagni for the patch.
- Fixed bug, found by 'Tom',
that made qingy sometimes improperly set focus to both session
and username (or password) fields.
- Prevent qingy from crashing in case of error when parsing
settings files: revert to text mode instead.
- Removed need of password to autologin feature.
Patch proposed by Florent Bondoux <florent.bondoux@resel.fr>
- Improved qingy main process and GUI communication. Now login times
in case of correct authentication are reduced...
Patch proposed by Florent Bondoux <florent.bondoux@resel.fr>
- Added feature, disabled by default, to check current runlevel
to prevent qingy from showing its GUI or starting a session
during a system shutdown or restart.
- Made GUI messages user definable in theme file.
- Made several message timeouts user configurable in theme file.
- Other small enhancements and fixes, some contributed by Florent Bondoux
<florent.bondoux@resel.fr>

- Added '-br' to default X args.
- No longer try to create /etc/X11/Sessions if it was not found

- Detached qingy from its controlling tty when starting sessions.
- qingy no longer tries to kill its GUI as it should not hang any more.
- Fixed bug that made shells other that zsh be invoked with a double '-';
that is --bash instead of -bash, which is the correct form for login
shell invocation.
- Added proper escaping for session names, removed quoting around them.
- Added support for selecting whether to start the X server in the same
tty qingy is running in (default for qingy), or in an unused one (default for startx).

- Changed again the way qingy fires up the shell: now it
is started as a login shell regardless of the session type,
text or graphic, pure shell of program...
- Made textbox mouse clicks position the text cursor according
to where in the text the user clicked.
- Wiped out matrix screensaver as it used a font with
licensing issues.
- Other small fixes and enhancements.

- Fixed zsh not being invocated as a login shell.
- Rationalized when to start a shell as a login
shell or not.
- Fixed an issue with dbus.
- Updated qingy PAM file for Gentoo.
- Added capability to change (or disable) mouse
cursors in themes: now it is possible to set up
a global theme cursor, as well as different
cursors when the mouse passes specific elements.

Fixed compilation issues against OpenSSL.

- Since shutting DirectFB mode down sometimes fails, due to the fact that
DirectFB itself may hang somewhere in its bowels when closing graphic mode,
I wrote some code that performs a low-level reset of the console,
thus effectively restoring it into an usable state. Now, when qingy has to
shut down its GUI (and it hangs), it will kill it, reset the console, and go on
as if nothing had happened :-)
- Fixed shift-tabbing from username to session.
- Removed 'retries' entry from settings file.
- Removed --screensaver command line arg, moved it to settings file.
- Added support for screen power management, now the screen(s) will be
powered off after a given timeout.
- Fixed a bug that made screen saver pop up immediately when user chose
to disable it by setting a timeout of 0.
- Small logger improvements; log more events in debug mode.
- Fixed bug that made qingy respawn indefinitely if one chooses syslog
as the only logging facility.
- Fixed bug that made qingy GUI crash if console was not chosen
as a logging capability.
- Fixed corrupt matrix screensaver font file.
- Made last session files in user home dirs owned by the
respective users, and no longer by root...
- Added some code to get available X sessions for those
distros that do not save them.
- Other fixes and clean-ups.
- DirectFB version 0.9.24 (or higher) is now required to run qingy.

- Argh, all graphics in default there were currupt! This probably was caused by the switch to svn... Fixed it by recovering the files from an older qingy tarball.
- Fixed a bug that sometimes made qingy GUI hang on exit.
- Made DirectFB support optional. This means that you can compile and run
qingy on systems that do not have DirectFB installed. You will not get
a graphic login, but will be presented a choice of sessions and will
have access to qingy advanced features like session locking or timeout.

- Because of the following, removed '--verbose' command line argument.
- Added extensive logging capabilities. Now you have the option of having
qingy log its messages to one (or more) of console, log file, syslog.
Default is console only. Also, you can specify the log verbosity, it being
one of ERROR (default, only log errors) or DEBUG (all messages will be logged).
This should help out those people on which qingy dies with a black screen
and an unresponsive machine (other than ssh), so that they should now be able
to see why it is failing on them.
- Allow user (in graphic mode) to select a session by typing the first char
of its name. Subsequent presses of the same key will bring up any other
session names that start with the same char, if any exists.
Code kindly provided by Brian Carter <spakov@users.sourceforge.net>.
- Added support for selecting desired session during text mode login.
It will also remember latest session just like graphic login.
- Made ./configure option 'enable-x-support' actually work. Thus disabling
it will make qingy actually compile and work without X installed.
It will also make X sessions unavailable (even if X is installed)...
- Other small bug fixes.

- Made qingy GUI multithreaded. Now every graphic element on screen has
one or more threads that handle draws and input events independently.
This greatly reduces code complexity as well as improving maintainability.
Also, it paves the road for adding some more elements to qingy GUI,
like an 'X profile' combo, or a 'host to connect to' one.
- Fixed bug that made main qingy process hang if its gui terminated abnormally,
when DirectFB is shutting down and gets an invalid address somewhere inside
its bowels. This made qingy lock up using 100% CPU power. Fortunately this
happened in text mode so that it was possible to kill the process and go on...
- Fixed "kill qingy" keybinding behaviour. Now it actually
quits qingy, instead of locking up your machine ;-).

- Added support for wildcards in photo screen saver options. This
means that you can put something like this in settings file:
screensaver "photos" =
"/path/to/images/200*",
"path/to/other/images/*.jpg"
Supported wildcards are * for string expansion and ? for single
char expansion.
- Re-allow for some cleaning before shutting DirectFB mode down.
Bug signalled and fixed by Masse Nicolas
- Added PAM file for debian, provided by Riccardo Stagni.

- Fixed libgcrypt support. Now it is no longer considered experimental,
and should work as expected :-)
- Fixed session timeout, in case of 'logout' action. Using this feature
no longer exposes users to possible machine lock-ups. Thus, the whole
session timeout feature can now be considered production ready, no longer
experimental.
- Fixed detection of X11 headers and libraries, it should now work
on those distros that put them under /usr/X11R6.

- SECURITY FIX: fixed bug where session locking did not work if there was
more than one running session that required it.
- Made running time screen saver less CPU hungry.
- Added support for zsh shell.
- Fixed last login time for 64 bit machines, thanks to Kevin Jamieson.
- Added EXPERIMENTAL session timeout feature, with configurable timeout
and actions (you can select either 'close your session' or 'lock it').
Right now, locking your session works, closing it may hang your machine
(in case of an X session) because qingy might be restarted before X
finishes shutting down. Try it at your own risk ;-)

- Fixed (again) support for non-PAM authentication.
- Added GPM start/stop scripts for Slackware Linux.
- Added 'no-hardware' to the args I pass to DirectFB. This should solve
issues and hangs with some buggy drivers (like ATI's).
- Limit Mobile Pentium 4 specific optimizations to gcc 3.4.x

- SECURITY ENHANCEMENT: made qingy GUI communicate auth data
to its main process using a fifo instead of an actual file.
- Added support for Fedora Core Linux. This means that I added some magic
to detect wether Gnome or Kde (or both of course) are installed, so that
qingy can display them in the sessions list...
- Manage text mode logins internally, without calling 'login'.
In this case, /etc/issue will be parsed and its contents
displayed on screen before login prompt.
- Added '-t' command line argument that tells qingy to
perform a text mode login (no graphics). This will allow users
to log in using an old-fashioned getty-like mode, but still retain
qingy advanced features like autologin and session locking.
- Added support for calling a script just before qingy GUI is fired up,
and one after it is shut down. Useful if DirectFB is picky about your
machine and you need to do something before/after switching DirectFB
mode on/off.
- Moved GPM start/stop code to external scripts that are called via
the feature described above. Currently supported distros are Gentoo
and Fedora.
- Made X start up in the same tty we logged in instead of switching
to a new one.
- Made qingy check authentication data only once, in its main
process. Until now it was once in the GUI and once in the
main process, leading to potential problems with /etc/securetty
since the GUI does not live in the same tty as the main process.
- Added support for selecting last session on a per-user or a
per-tty basis. Previous (and current default) behaviour was
per-user only. To change it you have to set variable
last_session_policy in settings file.
- Added support to select wether qingy should calculate last user
on a global or a per-tty basis. Default will be current
functionality, i.e. global. To change it you have to set variable
last_user_policy in settings file.
- Added new settings file variable, x_server_offset.
This is the offset used to search for an available X server number.
This number will affect the DISPLAY env variable.
Default is 1, setting it to 0 will make buggy OpenGL implementations
(like the ATI one) work with qingy (read: 3D support), but it will also
make it impossible to start an X server from a console session using startx
without passing it extra parameters.
- Added support for Mobile Pentium 4 processors optimization.
- Added EXPERIMENTAL support for GNU libgcrypt as crypto library.
If you decide to try it out, good luck creating a good keypair!
- Other small enhancements and bug fixes.

- SECURITY ENHANCEMENT: added support for encrypting communications
between qingy and its user interface, triggered by new ./configure
option: --enable-crypto, enabled by default.
- SECURITY ENHANCEMENT: Overwrite memory areas containing sensitive
user info before quitting...
- SECURITY FIX: now authentication data is passed between
qingy and its GUI trough a securely created temp file.
- A drop-down mouse menu for sessions has been implemented.
- Added customizable keybindings support
- Because of the above, removed old powerkeys support
- Fixed a rather obscure bug in which login could fail
even if username and password were correct
- Added new setting in theme file, 'native_resolution', which
lets you specify the screen resolution the theme was crafted
for. This way, when qingy encounters a resolution different
than this one, it will scale all graphic elements so that
they look the same on all resolutions.
- Added two new font sizes that can be used in theme files:
'smaller' and 'tiny'.
- Updated handling of utmp/wtmp logging so that chrootkit no longer
finds deletions in the latter when user logs out.
- Brought tty guardian to a nearly completed state: now it
checks the tty you came from; if you were logged in as root
or as same user on the destination tty, it lets you pass,
otherwise it will ask you to enter either destination user
or root password. If authentication fails, it will send you
back to the tty you came from. It also remembers the last
user who successfully authenticated, so that he will not
have to authenticate again every time he switches to the
guarded tty (but if you switch to a tty owned by a third
user and go back, authentication will be asked again). The
only drawback is that if you come from an X session in which
you are logged in as root, it will ask you to authenticate,
because that situation can not (yet) be distinguished from
when you come from an unused tty (which is owned by root
as well)...
- Fixed a number of tty guardian related bugs.
- Other small fixes and clean-ups.

- Finally the code behind the 'sleep' button has been implemented:
just set up the 'sleep' variable in config file to the
command you would like to execute for sleep mode, and
press the button in qingy...
- Now the directory qingy uses to store its temporary files
can be customized
- Added support for automatically logging in a user when
the machine powers up
- Correctly unset the DISPLAY env variable when starting a text
mode session, in case PAM provided one to us anyway.
- Added support for passing user-defined arguments to the X server.
To enhance security, as a default we now pass '-nolisten tcp'...
- Added support for AMD Athlon64 processors optimization.
- Fixed support for shadow password authentication...
- Fix stuff so that qingy links correctly against the PAM
library when compiled as a static binary.
- Session files containing spaces are now supported
- Reworked qingy PAM module to make it work with more distros
(tested on Fedora, Debian, Gentoo)
- Added support for 'retries' setting in config file
which allows user to specify how many times qingy
should try to bring its gui up before reverting
to text mode...

Brown paper bag release: fix horrible bug I just introduced not allowing to run qingy any more due to incorrect cmd line arguments handling...

Only fixes for bugs introduces in 0.5.0:
- Fixed a bug that prevented qingy from honouring
tty specific options in config file.
- Fixed a bug that prevented qingy from honouring some
command line arguments...
- Fix X11 sessions search path for Gentoo linux.
- Code clean ups.

- This new major version finally is able to work-around all issues
between DirectFB and 2.6 kernels. But make sure to use a
kernel >= 2.6.8 and never, ever attempt a 2.6.7 one as it is
likely to lock up your machine completely.
You have been warned ;-)
- High memory usage issues are now solved, now qingy
should use ~2.5 MB of RAM when user is logged in
(instead of ~40MB!)...
- Remove support for the '--black-screen-workaround'
cmd line arg, as it is no longer needed.

Bug fixes and some enhancements:
- Added proper support for transparent pixmaps, now qingy
will honour the transparency instead of faking it by
making the black pixels transparent...
- New command line argument: '--resolution <xres>x<yres>'.
Use it if qingy fails to properly detect your framebuffer
resolution.
- Added support for choosing your favourite X server in settings file
- Fixed theme loading code, now qingy should not crash any more...
- Made sure that if qingy dies horribly during initialization,
it does it with tty switching enabled so that user is not
stuck in front of a 'respawning too fast' message...
- Allow for buttons with no action associated to them,
just use "action = NULL", thanks to a suggestion from
Dark Liquid (http://www.darkliquid.net/)
- moved last user file from /etc/qingy/ to /var/lib/misc/
to comply to the File System Hierarchy Standard.
Thanks to Jason Andryuk <the_deuce@yahoo.com>
for poinint this out.
- Accepted a patch from Konstantin Korikov <lostclus@ukr.net>
that adds new keybindings in text boxes:
ctrl-h: delete one character
ctrl-u: delete all characters
ctrl-j: go to next textbox (same as ENTER)

... grab it while it is hot!

See the Change Log ;-P

- Now qingy locks vt switching when it enters DirectFB mode.
So it no longer crashes when you switch VT while it is starting
- no longer necessary to use a seed file to select a random theme
(you can safely remove file /etc/qingy/seed if it exists)
- Added support for text mode sessions
(just add your session script in /etc/qingy/sessions)
- Moved themes directory to /etc/qingy/themes
(note that you do not need to change your /etc/qingy/settings)
- Added some code to allow restarting of gpm even if it was
stopped by a previous session of qingy (that crashed ;-P)
- Removed '--silent' option. Now qingy is silent by default.
If you still want to get diagnostic messages on stderr
you have to use the '--verbose' option
- Added photo screen saver (it displays a slide show of photos)
- Added option 'SCREEN_SAVER' to config file. You can specify
'pixel' or 'photo' to select which screen saver you want
- Added option 'IMAGES_PATH' to config file. Use it to specify
a directory containing images to use with photo screen saver.
Note: you can specify more than one path by putting
several 'IMAGES_PATH' lines into the config file.
- No longer necessary to start qingy in the first 12 ttys
- Added support for comments is config file.
- A surprise now awaits the rightful master ;-)
- The usual minor fixes and clean ups