gdm + xdmcp

[Daniel Iliev]

On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 06:31:39 +0530
Girish Venkatachalam <girishvenkatachalam at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 01:10:06 Mar 01, Daniel Iliev wrote:

== snip ==

> > I started gdmsetup on the FreeBSD system and enabled "Remote
> > Login" (XDMCP). It was followed by a "gdm-restart". No error
> > messages, everything seems fine, but I can not connect to the
> > FreeBSD box issuing "Xnest -query bsd.example.org :2" from the
> > workstation.
> > 

== snip ==

> >  The two hosts are on the same HUB and in the same /24 private
> > network.
> > 
> > 
> > What am I missing in the FreeBSD setup?
> > 
> 
> I am confused why you need Xnest.
> 
> If you want the XDMCP of the remote host there are other means. Xnest
> is meant for running multiple X sessions in the same server.
> 
> If you want to access a remote machine's gdm, then you don't need
> Xnest for that.
> 

Indeed. It is not my intention to use XDMCP like that (although it has
some advantages in some cases), but since the remote host wasn't on the
local XDMCP list I tried a more direct approach.


> You can test for UDP port 177 along with the TCP ports 6000 and above
> with the nmap command.
> 
> # nmap -sT -p 6000-6005 bsd.example.org # For X
> # nmap -sU -p 177 bsd.example.org # For XDMCP
> 

Sorry, I forgot to mention that. nmap gives:

PORT    STATE  SERVICE
177/udp closed xdmcp
6000/tcp open  X11

Actually I think the latter is not required, but I'll let everything be
open and allowing until I get it working, then I'll disable the
unnecessary options afterwards.


> Most likely you have to enable "TCP listening" in gdm.conf. Just
> uncomment the relevant line and you should be all set.
> 

Now, this is where I get confused. In the gdm(1) man page it is stated
the configuration file should be gdm.conf. Well, the man page is from
2003 and "pkg_info -L" doesn't show such a file. Instead there is
"custom.conf{,.default}" and gdmsetup seems to be writing to this one.
Its content seems OK (meaning policy="allow all") to me:

sed -e '/^$/d;/#/d' /usr/local/etc/gdm/custom.conf
[daemon]
[security]
AllowRemoteRoot=true
DisallowTCP=false
[xdmcp]
Enable=true
[gui]
[greeter]
Use24Clock=yes
[chooser]
[debug]
[servers]


So, I believe there's something about gdm that I'm still missing or
it's just not working on FreeBSD. (bug?)


> Best of luck!
> 
> -Girish


Thanks and the same to you!

(Although I'd appreciate more help than luck in this case.)

 :)



-- 
Best regards,
Daniel