Lightdm
Lightdm is a login manager for Linux.
Lightdm Webkit
The lightdm-webkit2-greeter greeter lets you use a webkit engine to drive the login screen. This effectively makes the login screen a webpage which makes it super simple to customize and add functionality (via javascript).
Setup
Install the lightdm-webkit2-greeter package either from your distro's repository or from source.
On a Fedora Linux computer, pull the package from the copr repository:
# dnf copr enable antergos/lightdm-webkit2-greeter
# dnf install lightdm-webkit2-greeter
One installed, there are a few files you want to edit:
- /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf - change the greeter to lightdm-webkit2-greeter.
- /etc/lightdm/lightdm-webkit2-greeter.conf - define which theme you want to use.
- /usr/share/lightdm-webkit/themes - custom themes are placed here.
If you have any issues with lightdm, check out the log files at:
- /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log
- /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log - JavaScript exceptions will be displayed here
Troubleshooting
Issue: I had the lightdm-webkit login screen not accept any keyboard inputs when the webkitgtk4 library got updated past version 2.12.3-1.
Solution: This was resolved by updating lightdm-webkit2-greeter to a more recent version. This however required me to add these lines in the lightdm-webkit2-greeter.conf despite the theme not using these values.
[branding]
logo = /usr/share/lightdm-webkit/themes/antergos/img/antergos.png
user_image = /usr/share/lightdm-webkit/themes/antergos/img/antergos-logo-user.png
background_image = /usr/share/backgrounds/cpsc/lock.jpg
background_images = /usr/share/backgrounds/cpsc
Issue: I kept on getting this error when I clicked on a log in button:
CONSOLE ERROR Expected a string
Solution: I was calling lightdm.start_authentication() without passing in a username.