Selecting a session by the sddm greater - Was: Trying to open Different Flavors

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2016 11:16:52 -0400, Dick Barmann wrote:
>>> dick at dick-desktop:~$ ls -l /usr/share/xsessions/
>>> total 36
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  236 Feb 10  2016 gnome-classic.desktop
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  207 May 18 04:35 gnome.desktop
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  157 Apr 11 02:08 Lubuntu.desktop
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  165 Apr 11 02:08 Lubuntu-Netbook.desktop
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1507 Feb 27 09:07 LXDE.desktop
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6915 Apr 11 08:52 mate.desktop
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  198 Oct 14  2015 openbox.desktop
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2109 Apr 15 02:18 plasma.desktop

All the required files to show the sessions by a display manager's
greeter are available.

>>> dick at dick-desktop:~$ grep SessionDir /etc/sddm.conf

Regarding the sddm manpage

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man5/sddm.conf.5.html the
default values should be used.

[WaylandDisplay] section:
SessionDir=
         Path of the directory containing session files. Default value
         is "/usr/share/wayland-sessions".

[XDisplay] section:
SessionDir=
         Path of the directory containing session files. Default  value
         is "/usr/share/xsessions".

Even the issue mentioned by Oli IMO doesn't explain why you don't see a
list of the available sessions. IIUC this variable is related to a
session that already is chosen,
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2011-July/012004.html .

What is the output of

  ls -l /etc/sddm.conf

and of

  cat /etc/sddm.conf

>>> dick at dick-desktop:~$ dpkg -l lxde |grep ii >/tmp/dpkg.txt  
>> ii  lxde           7ubuntu1     all          Metapackage for LXDE
>> Does this help?

You should post, what we ask you to do, but since we now know that at
least the required desktop files are available in /usr/share/xsessions/
it doesn't matter. Anyway, at least post the output of

  dpkg -l *sddm*|grep ii

including the asterisks, don't drop them.

Regards,
Ralf