Old capabilities in new releases

[Leo72]

Hi guys,
I'm thinking about installing 22.04 (when released) on a customer machine. I already tried with 20.04 but couldn't get it working as expected due to two must-have features that kept me stuck with 14.04 (I know, I know...):
1) The possibility to autologin into a locked session. A couple applications have to auto start but only authorized personnel must have physical access to the session. Others can only press the power button.
2) The possibility to automount all drives including external disks (between internal and external it's about a dozen partitions over 7/8 disks) without having to click anywhere, even for new disks. The programs have to have them available with no user intervention. Kde has this feature and it works like a charm in 14.04 (well, 99% of the time which is good enough). In 20.04, on the same machine, it's useless. It works once in a lifetime, the other times the session just hangs on an empty screen with only the background image and the mouse cursor. No taskbar, no nothing. 14.04 when unable to mount gives up that disk and goes on without freezing (which is less than optimal but still acceptable). And I suspect 22.04 is no better in this regard.

If there are no builtin methods it's fine to install third party utilities and/or fiddle with some conf file as long as, once done, it works reliably because each time a problem occurs, some poor sod has to drive 85 kilometers (about 50 miles for you imperial guys) to go fix it and the same to get back... it had better be not too often.

I won't bore you with the details but that's how it has to be. It's my customer request (for good reasons I might add) and so I can't, for example, decide to change how people do stuff there. It works with Kubuntu 14.04 no problems. The customer expects no less from newer release and now I can no longer delay the upgrade (before anyone berates me, I would do a clean install). Either that or I'll have to install windows as it can handle those two necessities with the help of a little utility for the autologin.

Do you have any suggestion?

Thanks

PS: Please do not redirect me to xkcd dot com/1172/. Those requests are legitimate necessities in the work environment of the customer.

[claydoh]

1) The possibility to autologin into a locked session. A couple applications have to auto start but only authorized personnel must have physical access to the session. Others can only press the power button.

I don't think I understand this one. Autologin, but only for some? How are you doing this in 14.04?

Maybe a more in depth description of this might help.

2) The possibility to automount all drives including external disks (between internal and external it's about a dozen partitions over 7/8 disks) without having to click anywhere, even for new disks. The programs have to have them available with no user intervention. Kde has this feature and it works like a charm in 14.04 (well, 99% of the time which is good enough). In 20.04, on the same machine, it's useless. It works once in a lifetime, the other times the session just hangs on an empty screen with only the background image and the mouse cursor. No taskbar, no nothing. 14.04 when unable to mount gives up that disk and goes on without freezing (which is less than optimal but still acceptable). And I suspect 22.04 is no better in this regard.

I have been using this sort of feature for ages and ages Decades, even. You'd have to test it on your setup to verify, of course.
Check the very top line, which is what you probably want.


Again, you kinda halfta test it to figure things out.

I won't bore you with the details but that's how it has to be. I

But those details, particularly the hardware details, are key to help giving you feedback.

[claydoh]

PS: Please do not redirect me to xkcd dot com/1172/. Those requests are legitimate necessities in the work environment of the customer.

Ok, I guess you assume up front that we could intend to be rude?

Do expect questions, and get suggestions you may not like. These, if they happen, are not intended to be rude, but do help clear up what you are trying to do. , etc. Sometimes throwing a bunch of things at the wall can help find good, useful options.

[claydoh]

1) The possibility to autologin into a locked session.

I am going to guess that whatever issue you have with this is likely due to the change from LightDM and a LightDM greeter, to SDDM.
This is still available in Ubuntu, though the Kubuntu themed greeter part does not. There are others available, just not with the same styling. So whatever configuration you have for this in 14.04 should still be usable in later releases.

There are numerous other login managers available, LightDM (and maybe GDM?) offer the most bells and whistles. SDDM is less fancy, geared toward general desktop usage.

[Leo72]

I have been using this sort of feature for ages and ages Decades, even. You'd have to test it on your setup to verify, of course.
...
But those details, particularly the hardware details, are key to help giving you feedback.

That's what I use in 14.04 and it works. Same machine, different release and it doesn't. Hw details are as follows:
HP Z230, Xeon E3-1225 v3 @ 3.20GHz Quad Core, 24 gigs

sda 8:0 0 238,5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 130G 0 part /
├─sda2 8:2 0 106,5G 0 part /media/3543bcb7-b523-4a4e-99ea-68bf2149fd07
├─sda3 8:3 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 1,3G 0 part
└─sda6 8:6 0 688,3M 0 part
sdb 8:16 0 2,7T 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 2,7T 0 part /media/3T1
sdc 8:32 0 5,5T 0 disk
├─sdc1 8:33 0 16M 0 part
├─sdc2 8:34 0 5,4T 0 part /media/NTFS01
├─sdc3 8:35 0 9,8G 0 part [SWAP]
└─sdc4 8:36 0 19,5G 0 part /tmp
sdd 8:48 0 465,8G 0 disk
├─sdd1 8:49 0 237M 0 part
├─sdd2 8:50 0 372,5G 0 part /media/e5c103d8-2752-4c31-b1ee-0532dace3c71
└─sdd3 8:51 0 93G 0 part /media/3aa54fed-44bc-4e8d-bc44-f90ed51d4f45
sde 8:64 0 3,7T 0 disk
├─sde1 8:65 0 1,5T 0 part /media/NTFS15
└─sde2 8:66 0 2,2T 0 part /media/EXT425
sdf 8:80 0 4,6T 0 disk
├─sdf1 8:81 0 128M 0 part
└─sdf2 8:82 0 4,6T 0 part /media/Seagate Basic
sdg 8:96 0 2,7T 0 disk
└─sdg1 8:97 0 2,7T 0 part /media/NTFSOLD
sdh 8:112 0 465,1G 0 disk
├─sdh1 8:113 0 195,3G 0 part /media/VolumeNTFS
└─sdh2 8:114 0 269,8G 0 part /media/VolumeExt3


sdd hosts 20.04 and is basically not used. sda hosts 14.04.

Don't know if that helps.

Leo

[Leo72]

I am going to guess that whatever issue you have with this is likely due to the change from LightDM and a LightDM greeter, to SDDM.
This is still available in Ubuntu, though the Kubuntu themed greeter part does not. There are others available, just not with the same styling. So whatever configuration you have for this in 14.04 should still be usable in later releases.

There are numerous other login managers available, LightDM (and maybe GDM?) offer the most bells and whistles. SDDM is less fancy, geared toward general desktop usage.

Sorry for the double post but I could not figure out how to quote two posts in the same reply (I had to use google to discover where the Login link is in the main page, so bear with me, I am a little slow).

Back to the topic: I'll look into LightDM. Hoping it doesn't take ages to install and configure it. Next time I'm at the customer's I'll try on the 20.04. Thanks for the tip.

Leo

[Leo72]

Ok, I guess you assume up front that we could intend to be rude?

Do expect questions, and get suggestions you may not like. These, if they happen, are not intended to be rude, but do help clear up what you are trying to do. , etc. Sometimes throwing a bunch of things at the wall can help find good, useful options.

As with every community there are people that want to help and people that think that you're just trolling. I've been there. On a personal note I've once been flayed on a Mac forum (at the time I had a customer with Mac clients) because I dared suggest that OSX Tiger's virtual memory management wasn't top-notch (it was giving me hell) but on a non-personal note I've seen several lmgtfy or xkcd links in many forums.Many deserved, others not so much. I see how it could have seemed rude on my part to point this out but the meaning was just that I've to meet the customer requests and it's not just a matter of not wanting to adapt and throwing a tantrum. Appreciate all the help though, questions and objections included.

[Snowhog]

Leo72 I believe that if you stick with KFN you will be surprised at how different we are (as a community) than most every other forum you may have visited/been a part of. We don't tell people to RTFM. We don't belittle our members just to make us look bigger. We are genuinely here to help others to the best of our abilities, which vary greatly. No one here is a paid support specialist. We are enthusiasts of Kubuntu Linux specifically, and Linux generally. Our tolerance of different views is quite unlike most forums. This sets us apart from the mainstream crowd, and we are okay with that.

If I forgot (it happens), Welcome to KFN!