Qingy, by Michele Noberasco

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December 21, 2006

Version 0.9.4 'the light gets colourful' is out...

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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.
November 9, 2006

version 0.9.3 'the light grows brighter' is out...

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

version 0.9.2 'beginning to see the light' is finally out!

This version hopefully fixes some of the remaining outstanding issues, thus making a step further towards a stable 1.0 release...

What's new:

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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.

Please note that DirectFB version 0.9.24 (or higher) is now required to run qingy.
August 24, 2006

qingy 0.9.1 is out!

This release was put out because I discovered that since version 0.8.0 all graphics files in default theme were corrupt, making it to revert inconditionally to text mode when using default theme!

Sorry folks, I should have noticed this way before, but didn't, as I don't use the default theme :-(

Other changes:

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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.
August 3, 2006

Just released qingy 0.9.0

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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.
June 5, 2006

Here goes qingy 0.8.0

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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 ;-)
April 4, 2006

Just released qingy 0.7.4

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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.
March 16, 2006

Here goes qingy 0.7.3

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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.
March 9, 2006

Here goes qingy 0.7.2

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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 ;-)
February 7, 2006

After a very short time, qingy 0.7.1 is here!

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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
February 1, 2006

After a lot of time, qingy 0.7.0 finally saw the light!

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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... If you would like to see more sessions/window managers added, feel free to contact me.
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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. Again, if you would like to see another distro added, feel free to contact me.
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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.
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