Qingy, by Michele Noberasco

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History
Version 1.0.0 - December 7, 2010

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Nothing fancy, just added support for PAM consolekit.
Version 0.9.9 - May 11, 2009

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Reverted change in stdin management that interfered with DBus. Thanks again to Florent Bondoux for the patch...
Version 0.9.8 - Apr 27, 2009

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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.
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Fixed bug, found by 'Tom', that made qingy sometimes improperly set focus to both session and username (or password) fields.
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Prevent qingy from crashing in case of error when parsing settings files: revert to text mode instead.
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Removed need of password to autologin feature. Patch proposed by Florent Bondoux
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Improved qingy main process and GUI communication. Now login times in case of correct authentication are reduced... Patch proposed by Florent Bondoux
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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.
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Made GUI messages user definable in theme file.
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Made several message timeouts user configurable in theme file.
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Other small enhancements and fixes, some contributed by Florent Bondoux
Version 0.9.7 - July 8, 2008

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Added -br to default X args.
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No longer try to create /etc/X11/Sessions if it was not found
Version 0.9.6 - April 26, 2007

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Detached qingy from its controlling tty when starting sessions.
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qingy no longer tries to kill its GUI as it should not hang any more.
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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).
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Added proper escaping for session names, removed quoting around them.
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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).
Version 0.9.5 - January 17, 2007

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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...
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Made textbox mouse clicks position the text cursor according to where in the text the user clicked.
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Wiped out matrix screensaver as it used a font with licensing issues.
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Other small fixes and enhancements.
Version 0.9.4 - December 21, 2006

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Fixed zsh not being invocated as a login shell.
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Rationalized when to start a shell as a login shell or not.
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Fixed an issue with dbus.
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Updated qingy PAM file for Gentoo.
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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.
Version 0.9.3 - November 9, 2006

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This version fixes a compilation issue if user chooses OpenSSL as a crypto library...
Version 0.9.2 - October 24, 2006

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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 :-)
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Fixed shift-tabbing from username to session.
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Removed retries entry from settings file.
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Removed --screensaver command line arg, moved it to settings file.
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Added support for screen power management, now the screen(s) will be powered off after a given timeout.
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Fixed a bug that made screen saver pop up immediately when user chose to disable it by setting a timeout of 0.
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Small logger improvements; log more events in debug mode.
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Fixed bug that made qingy respawn indefinitely if one chooses syslog as the only logging facility.
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Fixed bug that made qingy GUI crash if console was not chosen as a logging capability.
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Fixed corrupt matrix screensaver font file.
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Made last session files in user home dirs owned by the respective users, and no longer by root...
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Added some code to get available X sessions for those distros that do not save them.
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Other fixes and clean-ups.
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DirectFB version 0.9.24 (or higher) is now required to run qingy.
Version 0.9.1 - August 24, 2006

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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.
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Fixed a bug that sometimes made qingy GUI hang on exit.
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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.
Version 0.9.0 - August 3, 2006

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Because of the following, removed --verbose command line argument.
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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.
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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.
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Added support for selecting desired session during text mode login. It will also remember latest session just like graphic login.
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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)...
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Other small bug fixes.
Version 0.8.0 - June 5, 2006

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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.
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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...
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Fixed "kill qingy" keybinding behaviour. Now it actually quits qingy, instead of locking up your machine ;-)
Version 0.7.4 - April 4, 2006

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Added support for wildcards in photo screen saver options. Now this is legal in your settings file:

screensaver "photos" =
"/path/to/images/200*",
"path/to/other/images/*.jpg"

Supported wildcards are * for string expansion and ? for single char expansion.
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Re-allow for some cleaning before shutting DirectFB mode down. Bug signalled and fixed by Masse Nicolas.
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Added PAM file for debian, provided by Riccardo Stagni.
Version 0.7.3 - March 16, 2006

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Fixed libgcrypt support. Now it is no longer considered experimental, and should work as expected :-)
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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.
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Fixed detection of X11 headers and libraries, it should now work on those distros that put them under /usr/X11R6.
Version 0.7.2 - March 9, 2006

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Security fix: fixed bug where session locking did not work if there was more than one running session that required it.
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Made running time screen saver less CPU hungry.
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Added support for zsh shell.
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Fixed last login time for 64 bit machines, thanks to Kevin Jamieson.
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Added EXPERIMENTAL session timeout feature, with configurable timeout and actions. Action can be one of 'close your session' and 'lock it'. Right now, locking your session works, closing it may hang your machine (only in case of an X session) because qingy might be restarted before X finishes shutting down. Try it at your own risk ;-)
Version 0.7.1 - February 7, 2006

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Fixed (again) support for non-PAM authentication.
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Added GPM start/stop scripts for Slackware Linux.
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Added 'no-hardware' to the args I pass to DirectFB. This should solve issues and hangs with some buggy drivers (like ATI's).
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Limit Mobile Pentium 4 specific optimizations to gcc 3.4.x
Version 0.7.0 - February 1, 2006

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Security enhancement: made qingy GUI communicate authentication data to its main process using a fifo instead of an actual file.
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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...
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Manage text mode logins internally, without calling /bin/login. Qingy will parse /etc/issue and display its contents on screen before login prompt.
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Added -t (or --text-mode) 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.
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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.
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Moved GPM start/stop code to external scripts that are called via the feature described above. Currently supported distros are Gentoo and Fedora.
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Made X start up in the same tty we logged in instead of switching to a new one.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 another X server from a console session using startx without passing it extra parameters.
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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!
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Other small enhancements and bug fixes.
Version 0.6.0 - May 30, 2005

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Security enhancement: added support for encrypting communications between qingy and its user interface, triggered by new ./configure option: --enable-crypto, enabled by default.
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Security enhancement: Overwrite memory areas containing sensitive user info before quitting...
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Security fix: now authentication data is passed between qingy and its GUI trough a securely created temp file.
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A drop-down mouse menu for sessions has been implemented.
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Added customizable keybindings support.
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Because of the above, removed old powerkeys support
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Fixed a rather obscure bug in which login could fail even if username and password were correct
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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.
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Added two new font sizes that can be used in theme files: smaller and tiny.
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Updated handling of utmp/wtmp logging so that chrootkit no longer finds deletions in the latter when user logs out.
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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)...
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Fixed a number of tty guardian related bugs.
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Other small fixes and clean-ups.
Version 0.5.3 - January 11, 2005

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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...
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Now the directory qingy uses to store its temporary files can be customized
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Added support for automatically logging in a user when the machine powers up
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Unset the DISPLAY env variable when starting a text mode session, in case PAM provided a (wrong) one to us anyway.
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Added support for passing user-defined arguments to the X server. To enhance security, as a default we also pass -nolisten tcp...
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Added optimizations for AMD Athlon64 processors
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Fixed support for shadow passwords authentication
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Fix stuff so that qingy links correctly against the PAM library when compiled as a static binary.
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Session files containing spaces are now supported
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Reworked qingy PAM module to make it work with more distros (tested on Fedora, Debian, Gentoo)
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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...
Version 0.5.2 - August 19, 2004

Once, Linus had 2.3.99 or something like that, and thought it was good, so released it as 2.4.0. Shortly after, 2.4.1 came out, tagged the 'Brown paper bag release'. It is that time of the year again, I released 0.5.1 to fix some problems, and broke the toy completely! So I'm releasing (yet another) new version, 0.5.2, that fixes the fix. I'm really sorry guys, but this one should work for real this time...
Version 0.5.1 - August 18, 2004

- 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.
Version 0.5.0 - August 17, 2004

- 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!)...
- Removed support for the --black-screen-workaround cmd line arg, as it is no longer needed.
Version 0.4.1 - July 28, 2004

- Added proper support for transparent pixmaps.
qingy will now 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...
- Hopefully 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.
- Moved last user file from /etc/qingy/ to /var/lib/misc/ to comply to the File System Hierarchy Standard. Thanks to Jason Andryuk for poinint this out.
- Accepted a patch from Konstantin Korikov 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)

Version 0.4.0 - March 18, 2004

- Properly detect framebuffer resolution on qingy startup, instead of using directfbrc.qingy, which is no longer necessary: you can safely remove it from your system. This also means that you no longer need to have the 'fbset' utility to compile qingy.
- Now screensavers are modular; this means that:
- only the screensaver you chose gets loaded at run time; this makes qingy use a little less memory
- you can roll your own screensaver, without need to recompile qingy
- you must be careful about the screensaver you install, this is effectively an entry point to arbitrary code that would run with root privileges (don't say you haven't been warned ;-P )
- Pa0lino added an utility, 'themer', to convert qingy 0.2 series theme files to qingy 0.3 theme structure...
- Fixed some bugs in config files parser...
- Added support for writing to /var/log/wtmp; this allows tools like 'who', 'w', 'finger' to be able to 'see' users logged in with qingy.
- Added option in both setting and theme file to select wether you want or not to clear the background image in dialogs like "logging in user...".
- Added support for tty specific options. See the new settings file for an example on how this works.
- Added a file, /etc/qingy/welcomes, where you can put personalized welcome messages (like the 'Greetings, Master...' when you log in as root).
- Added session locking support; if you enable this, when you try to switch to a qingy-controlled tty whose owner is not your current user, you will be asked for the password of that user before being allowed to continue. If you are root, of course, you can switch to any tty you chose to. Default setting is 'no'. Note: this is an EXPERIMENTAL feature, so you are warned. That said, it appears to work well, only issue that I know of is that if you log in into a text console and later fire up an X server manually, the tty the X server is running in is not guarded.
- Made qingy install its stuff in a way that conforms to the file system hierarchy standards (themes are now installed to /usr/share/qingy/themes, screen savers to /usr/lib/qingy/screensavers).
- Now qingy by default creates a bunch of shared libraries and loads its stuff only when it is needed. This saves a lot of memory, expecially for those qingy processes that are waiting for someone to switch to the tty they are running in. This option can be disabled with by passing the --enable-static-build argument to ./configure
- Be nicer to Slackware (and maybe other distros as well ;-)
This means:
- qingy now sets also the PATH env variable (otherwise qingy is not able to start an X session because xinit is not able to find the location of the X server; this is true for Slackware).
- Slackware puts its X session scripts in /etc/X11/xinit/ now we honour that, too, following their name pattern "xinitrc.*"
- Screen saver support is now optional (but enabled by default), for those security paranoids ;-P
Version 0.3.0 - January 9, 2004

- New memory allocation/deallocation management.
- Unlock vt switching before dying (yes, this was annoying).
- Solved a bug that made qingy crash when you switched to its tty after it had been sitting there for some time. Basically it opened a file descriptor every second and did not close it...
- Now qingy reverts to text mode instead of dying when it encounters non-fatal errors in command line parameters or settings / theme file...
- Various previously unchecked memory allocations got leashed
- Added photo screen saver (it displays a slide show of photos).
- Now qingy parses /etc/inittab to decide what to do when user presses ctrl-alt-del (up to now it did nothing). Supported stuff: poweroff, halt, reboot, shutdown (with -h or -r), as well as just displaying a message (echo "your message here").
- Added --disable-lastuser option to tell qingy not do display last user name. This way it will always ask for user name.
- Added support for user's own .xsession file (just create a .xsession file in your home dir, put there the stuff you want to load, and choose "Your .xsession" as session).
- Now background image stays there when attempting to log in, during timeouts... It goes away only during screen saver
- Added ./configure option to disable PAM support (--disable-pam)
- Added support in config file to specify a shutdown policy:
shutdown_policy = everyone to allow everyone to shutdown
shutdown_policy = root to be asked for root password
shutdown_policy = noone to forbid shutdown completely.
If this option is not used, qingy defaults to everyone
- Rewrote load_settings.c (and added others ;-P). Now parsing of setting and theme files is done via regular expressions. I undestand little (but I will ;-P) of that stuff, so all the praise goes to Pa0lino...
- Radically changed configuration files structure... too hard to explain it all here: see updated documentation for all details. In short: all stuff you see on screen can be added, removed, moved, changed... you got the point :-)
- Added user-oriented welcome messages. See documentation. Thanks, again, to Pa0lino
- Added support for user-provided CFLAGS: just use ./configure MY_CFLAGS=<your_cflags_here> Please note that qingy already tries to set the best optimization for your arch in CFLAGS; using the above feature overrides those settings... I added this feature primarily to use with Gentoo GNU Linux portage system.
- Added info documentation for qingy, thanks (again) to Pa0lino... just issue a 'info qingy'!
- Many fixes and clean ups.
Version 0.2.3 - October 21, 2003

- 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.
Version 0.2.2 - September 29, 2003

- Starting X sessions for users with a shell other than bash should no longer fail with strange errors (this occurred at least with tcsh)
- added support for selecting a random theme at startup (just use 'random' as theme name)
- added support for screen savers
- added a (first and simple) screen saver: pixel. Just a small pixel jumping around the screen...
- added option to select which framebuffer device to use
- updated text mode login for increased security
- no longer necessary to create a /etc/directfbrc file: now qingy creates automatically file /etc/directfbrc.qingy (thus other DirectFB apps are unaffected) with hopefully the proper resolution already detected. Note: you need the 'fbset' program for this.
Version 0.2.1 - September 1, 2003

- Correctly changes tty ownership
- Hopefully solves PAM issues
- Added option to close DirectFB mode before shutting down, so that you can see your system shutdown messages
- Added option for hiding last user name
- Added option for hiding password chars completely
- Now ENTER in username field pass control to password
- Now qingy reverts back to text mode login if something goes wrong with DirectFB
- Message Login failed now appears for 2 seconds
- Various fixes and clean ups (memory leaks, allocation failures...)
Version 0.2 - July 18, 2003

- Added support for PAM
- new --silent option to avoid diagnostic messages on stderr
- Various clean ups
Version 0.1.1 - July 9, 2003

- Embedded object related functions into object structures themselves
- Full theme support
- Changed default theme
- Various clean ups
Version 0.1 - July 5, 2003

First public release