Can't change login background

[astral narwhal]

No matter what background I put in the login window settings,whether the ones coming with mint or mine,it just stays grey when i try logging in. What do I do? I am very new to Mint. Also no matter what aligning I put it doesn't change either.

if i put aligning to left it still stays in the middle

[tepid lion]

I've not ever seen this window before. It might be newer than I know. Do you see an item called "lightdm GTK+ Greeter themes/ settings" in System Settings?

[astral narwhal]

If you mean this window, no.

[tepid lion]

try to search 'greeter'

[astral narwhal]

Nope, still nothing

[tepid lion]

ok nvm. in ur first pic, try to turn off the toggle for draw user backgrounds

[astral narwhal]

I tried that also, still nothing

[tepid lion]

so weird!. did u try to select a decent sized jpg or png from your own home folder instead of specifying /usr/share/backgr... ?

[astral narwhal]

I was actually trying to use mint's backgrounds

But I tried many different locations

Didnt work

[tepid lion]

did this settings thing ever ask u for sudo password?

[astral narwhal]

Yes

[tepid lion]

and u put?

[astral narwhal]

Of course

[tepid lion]

lol aight

[astral narwhal]

Its so weird

[tepid lion]

test this in the terminal

whereis lightdm

does it return a path?

[astral narwhal]

yes

multiple paths

[tepid lion]

open synaptic

might try oldskool way

[tepid lion]

click reload in synaptic

just search it in start menu i mean

[astral narwhal]

aahh okay okay

[tepid lion]

after it has refreshed,... ignore that msg btw

click search, then lightdm-gtk

see if that greeter program shows up in results

[tepid lion]

hmm

what about click search, (by name only) and put lightdm

does it show some green (installed) results?

[astral narwhal]

Yes i got some

[tepid lion]

close that other settings window if still open, then in terminal do: sudo lightdm-settings

[astral narwhal]

okay

it opened up

[tepid lion]

the same exact window?

[astral narwhal]

Yes

[tepid lion]

heh.

[astral narwhal]

And i think i was there before

[tepid lion]

well i dont wanna screw up your whole system by installing something old, so idk

[astral narwhal]

Since i also saw some post about it and after changing stuff nothing happened

[astral narwhal]

Its cool im using it for testing mostly

So i dont mind

[tepid lion]

check in terminal : systemctl status lightdm

or prefix that all with sudo if nothing works the first way

[tepid lion]

I think we're on the right track, but u may have discovered a bug in this new "login window" module

[astral narwhal]

Yay!

[tepid lion]

from what I recall (old experience) the login window would have pretty backgrounds that would auto-cycle every 15 seconds or so while awaiting input

u dont see any of that?

[astral narwhal]

Nope its just grey

[tepid lion]

install these two packages then.

tick them for installation, then click apply button in toolbar

[astral narwhal]

👍

done

[tepid lion]

then, enable it from terminal

sudo sysctl enable lightdm-gtk-greeter

then check in settings panel if that gtk greeter tool is there now

[tepid lion]

ok just check the other thing

[tepid lion]

no i meant open main settings

then look for the lightdm-gtk+greeter settings item

[astral narwhal]

well now theres two

[tepid lion]

oh neat

click both n see if one is diff. than before

[astral narwhal]

sure is

[tepid lion]

yeah that's the oldskool one

set a colour or image n see if works. (it should have asked for sudo pwd)

@astral narwhal anything??

[astral narwhal]

Sorry my power shut off 💀

I will let you know when its back

[tepid lion]

damn.

[astral narwhal]

ok its back

@tepid lion

[tepid lion]

alright, did u test?

[astral narwhal]

i applied the settings, do i need to reboot or just log out

[tepid lion]

just log out

[astral narwhal]

still doesnt work 😭

[tepid lion]

damn. well that's as far as I can help rn.

test with live USB

of Mint. if it works there, then u messed up something in the system

u can log out of live session, after tweaking the login window, and the password is just blank, press enter.

[astral narwhal]

also when i hover over the warning sign it says lightdm does not have permissions to read path ;/home/andi

though it still shows up when i log out

i think mint doesnt utilize the old lightdm gtk+ greeter but instead still insists on the newer one

[junior wigeon]

What does the login screen look like? Is there still a login box?

If so what does that look like

[tribal socket]

Can you share an image of the login screen?

[astral narwhal]

Can I screenshot on that screen?

[ebon cave]

sysctl and systemctl are very different programs btw :)

[tribal socket]

Probably not, if you have a mobile phone, take a picture with it.

[ebon cave]

so that's why it didn't work

[astral narwhal]

alrighty

[junior wigeon]

its because you nuked lightdm and replaced it with gdm

did you install GNOME or anything?

[tepid lion]

i messed up

and thanks, Lot

[astral narwhal]

I don't think so

[ebon cave]

you should do what stunner said but with systemctl, also systemctl disable gdm

[junior wigeon]

ok well login and do systemctl disable gdm

[tepid lion]

it still shows up in the thread in pictures we searched the pacage

[junior wigeon]

then systemctl enable lightdm

[junior wigeon]

lightdm-gtk-greeter is a greeter, not a systemd service

[tepid lion]

tho this may still hold true

[junior wigeon]

also not the correct greeter for mint

[tribal socket]

Run apt remove gdm and show me if it asks you for something.

[astral narwhal]

nope didnt ask for anything

just this

[tribal socket]

Probably the name for the package is different from gdm

[junior wigeon]

post systemctl status lightdm

[tribal socket]

I think it was this @junior wigeon

[junior wigeon]

and systemctl status gdm

[junior wigeon]

no that was enable

[tribal socket]

Oh yeah, sure

[junior wigeon]

and systemctl status gdm?

[junior wigeon]

do systemctl disable gdm

[astral narwhal]

done

[junior wigeon]

then systemctl enable lightdm

[astral narwhal]

done

[junior wigeon]

no errors?

[astral narwhal]

though it asked for pass three times

[junior wigeon]

yeah thats normal

restart and post image of login window

[astral narwhal]

can i log out or do i gotta restart

[tribal socket]

run systemctl status lightdm before restart

[tribal socket]

run apt remove gdm3

[astral narwhal]

Done

[tribal socket]

did it show something?

[astral narwhal]

seems regular to me

Should i reboot now

[junior wigeon]

no

[tribal socket]

run apt install --reinstall lightdm slick-greeter

[tepid lion]

need sudo for remove

[astral narwhal]

soo i redo that one with sudo then?

[tribal socket]

no, it's already removed

[astral narwhal]

done

[junior wigeon]

do systemctl enable lightdm

[tribal socket]

mint has a wrapper around apt which prepends sudo when necessary

[junior wigeon]

if it returns same error do systemctl unmask lightdm.service then systemctl daemon-reload

[astral narwhal]

done

[tribal socket]

the installation should set things up, I think he could try reboot now

[astral narwhal]

it did give errors again

[junior wigeon]

ok now do systemctl enable lightdm

if it returns errors then post them

[tepid lion]

🤯

[tribal socket]

@astral narwhal try to reboot

[astral narwhal]

👍

[tribal socket]

and then show us how the login window looks now

[astral narwhal]

Okay

[tepid lion]

suspense

[tribal socket]

🥁

[astral narwhal]

Looks good to me!!!

[tepid lion]

ayyyyy

[astral narwhal]

Haha thank you guys so much for this

[tepid lion]

that was a huge mess

[astral narwhal]

Awful 😂

Ok so, can somebody explain how did i mess this up

So i wouldnt repeat it

[tepid lion]

frikkin gnome

[junior wigeon]

Somehow gdm got installed and enabled

you might've installed a package or something that has it as a dependency

[tepid lion]

to not repeat, always watch either the terminal warnings before saying yes to clumped dependencies

also same if using synaptic

it gives last-second "to be installed" warnings

[astral narwhal]

I see, i see, so basically i gotta avoid gdm from now on

[tepid lion]

if u see gnome-shell or gdm, RUN A-WAY

[astral narwhal]

Haha gotcha, so can we remove the old "login-window" settings now?

[tepid lion]

yep

just scroll up

[tribal socket]

remember to mark this thread as solved as well

[astral narwhal]

is that the lightdm-gtk-greeter

[tepid lion]

yes remember u clicked 2 packages in a picture

[astral narwhal]

Yeah

[tepid lion]

think was that and its settings thing

[astral narwhal]

do i go for complete removal

[tepid lion]

nah

just in case some config file residing in home may be linked to the new lightdm

[astral narwhal]

Ah okay

So just removal

[tepid lion]

yes

[astral narwhal]

Okay then, hopefully i never encounter this again, but if i do by some chance, i will know what to do

[tepid lion]

yeh just search this small-questions thing

[astral narwhal]

Yep

[tepid lion]

SOLVED (Solution: remove gdm, gdm3; reinstall lightdm and slick greeter, and unmask the lightdm service and enable it via systemctl

[grave oriole]

all that just to change the login screen background because the normal guis weren't working LMAOO😭 only on linux

[tepid lion]

it's cuz the issue was unknown. Else the solution is 2 lines like in my last post.

[grave oriole]

i actually have had this issue going on, it must've come up sometime within the past week or two