Problem with User Icon/Avatar

[Frazer]

Hi

Just picked up a new problem 'feature' and wonder if anyone else has seen this.

I have a laptop set up with three users (one with admin rights). While logged in as admin I set the user avatars. All have updated correctly and show as changed. If I log out or reboot the splash screen shows the new admin avatar fine but the other two are still the default blue roundel. I have since logged back in and checked the user accounts and all show that the avatars are set correctly for all users.

Any ideas?

Regards, Frazer

[vinnywright]

go to the users /home/username and see if their is a hidden "." file called (.face.icon) that is the avatar you selected @hear their are 2 , 1- a .face the actual file and 2- a .face.icon that is a link to .face , but I may have made that when things changed at some point in the past

it should be owner/group user/user where "user" is the users account name .

VINNY

[sithlord48]

you could also copy the icons to

/usr/share/sddm/faces

they need to be named <user>.face.icon where <user> is the name of the user you want to use that face for.

[Frazer]

Hi Vinny

Since my post I have found that if I log into each user account and then set the icon from there it works fine but that rather defeats the point of trying to centrally manage the users. I have found the .face.icon files you refer to and noted that these are referenced differently depending on whether or not the icon has been set correctly.

I wondered if the problem was that I made the change to the icons some time after setting up the users. My thinking here was that if the OS was creating the file structures for each user it may be that a later alteration wasn't updating. To test this I set up a new dummy user and set an icon before applying the changes, assuming that maybe if everything was done at the same time then the icon would be set up with the rest of the file structure. However I saw the same problem. When I logged out, there was the login splash screen with the new user login but the default roundel icon. I then logged in to the new user account and went to the system settings. The user accounts all showed the correct icons as I had set them. I noticed that there is a difference between the accounts that are set correctly and the test account as follows.

User with icon set correctly

-rw-rw-r-- 1 physicsstudent physicsstudent 11647 Oct 12 17:32 .face
lrwxrwxrwx 1 physicsstudent physicsstudent 26 Oct 12 17:32 .face.icon -> /home/physicsstudent/.face

User with icon set through system settings but not updating/displaying correctly

-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 14965 Oct 12 22:32 .face
lrwxrwxrwx 1 test test 5 Oct 12 22:32 .face.icon -> .face

Does this suggest a bug?

Regards, Frazer

[Frazer]

Thanks Sithlord48. Tried that too and it works. Just seems to me that if there is a GUI it's kind of reasonable that it should work. Command line is great for granular detail but somewhat laborious and potentially error prone when shifting around the minutiae associated with extended and centralised user management so a GUI is a sensible and pragmatic approach. just a pity that it seems to be buggy and that it's features are so limited.

Frazer

[sithlord48]

Yes this may suggest a bug. As it should set them like the first instance to prevent a malformed path by just using a relative path for the link.

edit: goto http://bugs.kde.org , If you used the "Account details " in system settings the item you want to make the bug for is "user-manager"

[jglen490]

I think, and this is just my opinion, but the point of "central management" is providing a work environment and permissions on data. Setting up the "environment" (/home/<user1>, /home/<user2>, etc.), making each user a member of some group(s), with appropriate permissions to access data within the system is the central manager's job. Setting some icon whether it be an actual face picture, a "pick and shovel" picture, or "my little pony", is on the user as evidenced by what you actually saw. That's the way it is with every web site, or computer system I've ever seen. You've done the heavy lifting with environment, groups, and data, leave it to the user to be an individual. Much easier on you.

Sorry if I sound a bit grumpy, but even students have some humanity

[oshunluvr]

While jglen490 makes excellent point regarding who should be in charge of what, IMO the simplest way to control user face icons is to insert a link into the user home as .face.icon and link it to the desired face icon in /usr/share/sddm/faces, notwithstanding an actual bug of course.