Xfce Forum

lintek

Member

Registered: 2013-02-07

Posts: 47

[RESOLVED] XFCE4 autologin .face missing on the login screen

Running Debian 13.4 (Trixie) with XFCE4 (4.20)

I have the following packages installed to support autologin
- lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings
- lightdm-gtk-greeter
- liblightdm-gobject-1-0
- lightdm-settings
- lightdm
- slick-greeter

The Login Window User tab contains my username and delay time.
Restarted the lightdm service, but the .face icon is not displayed with the username

Added later 5 h 17 min 49 s:
Apparently I had to revert back to the GTK instance of the display manager. The slick-greeter just won't play right by displaying the login screen avatar.png. So be it. Removing packages lightdm-settings and slick-greeter returned the original greeter. My designated avatar.png is displayed and the changes I made to the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf allows for autologin.

Last edited by lintek (2026-05-12 18:29:15)

eriefisher

Wanderer

From: ON, Canada

Registered: 2008-10-25

Posts: 963

Re: [RESOLVED] XFCE4 autologin .face missing on the login screen

To properly change the user's avatar see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LightDM section 5.3.
Lightdm needs read access to the image which it does not have if the image is in your home directory.

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But it's all right, when you're all in pain and you feel the rain come down
It's alright, when you find your way, then you see it disappear
It's alright....
Chris Cornell

lintek

Member

Registered: 2013-02-07

Posts: 47

Re: [RESOLVED] XFCE4 autologin .face missing on the login screen

To properly change the user's avatar see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LightDM section 5.3.
Lightdm needs read access to the image which it does not have if the image is in your home directory.

Right. I have followed those steps but in Debian 13 (Trixie), the slick-greeter doesn't have the right ingredients to talk to the accounts-daemon in the right way to display the ICON on the greeter. The ICON does display in the slick-greeter in all Linux Mint flavors (Cinnamon, XFCE, MATE, and LMDE). I also poked around the web a bit and found some demos from non-LM distro users setting up lightdm with the slick-greeter and the ICON wasn't displayed.

Results:
I see the greeter ICON on my LMDE 7 PCs but not my Debian Trixie (Cinnamon) and Debian Trixie (XFCE) PCs.
Interesting to note my user icon will appear on the lock screens of both Debian PCs.
Although the Debian XFCE PC displays the GTK lock screen greeter. I guess this makes sense since I have bother greeters installed (lightdm-gtk-greeter and slick-greeter)

So this is definitely a Linux Mint tweaked integration between the slick-greeter and maybe the accounts-daemon to display the ICON.

eriefisher

Wanderer

From: ON, Canada

Registered: 2008-10-25

Posts: 963

Re: [RESOLVED] XFCE4 autologin .face missing on the login screen

This is Debian Sid/Siduction. Lightdm with Slick-Greeter. To the left of my name is the Siduction icon. To the right is the xfce icon for login selection. Which one are you missing? The GTK-Greeter does provide a way to set icons in the greeter settings.

---

But it's all right, when you're all in pain and you feel the rain come down
It's alright, when you find your way, then you see it disappear
It's alright....
Chris Cornell

lintek

Member

Registered: 2013-02-07

Posts: 47

Re: [RESOLVED] XFCE4 autologin .face missing on the login screen

This is Debian Sid/Siduction. Lightdm with Slick-Greeter. To the left of my name is the Siduction icon. To the right is the xfce icon for login selection. Which one are you missing? The GTK-Greeter does provide a way to set icons in the greeter settings.

I'm missing the user ICON on the left. Yes, I know that the GTK greeter (lightdm-gtk-greeter) supports the use of user the ICON in its greeter. And I tested that successfully already in both VMs. One running Debian (Trixie) Cinnamon and the other Debian (Trixie) XFCE. But no success getting that ICON when the VMs are running the slick-greeter.

I guest the question is, what is the difference between Debian Sid/Siduction vs Debian (Trixie). Trixie being the vanilla distro.

These are the package version from Debian
slick-greeter/stable,now 2.0.9-1
lightdm-settings/stable,now 2.0.7-1

The package versions in the Mint repos
lightdm-settings/gigi,gigi,now 2.1.1
slick-greeter/gigi,now 2.2.6

Added later 2 h 30 min 33 s:
I did some research. Is this accurate information?

Debian Sid and Siduction show the Slick‑Greeter user icon because they ship newer, less‑patched, and sometimes more complete builds of Slick‑Greeter and AccountsService than Debian Testing/Stable (including Trixie). In Sid/Siduction, the avatar‑loading code path is not disabled, the theme does not hide the avatar container, and AccountsService integration is fully functional.

This would explain your image.

Added later 7 h 47 min 11 s:
Now I'm cooking with grease.  My patience paid off.

That image and the mention of the alternative Debian distro gave me the idea that if I can get to the Debian (Testing) repos I might just be able to install the latest (unstable) version of slick-greeter. I was able to locate the repo source path:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

Add it to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/testing.list
Run apt update
Run apt install testing -t slick-greeter  (slick-greeter/now 2.2.5-1 amd64)
Version check from the command line:
  % slick-greeter -v
      slick-greeter 2.2.6

Went back and made all the required configuration file change and restarted lightdm. And blam! User avatar is present in the greeter.
now my Debian Trixie XFCE desktop is where I want it to be.

Last edited by lintek (2026-05-13 11:39:10)

eriefisher

Wanderer

From: ON, Canada

Registered: 2008-10-25

Posts: 963

Re: [RESOLVED] XFCE4 autologin .face missing on the login screen

Awesome! I'm glad you got working to your liking. I was unaware that there was such a difference between the versions. I've been using sid/unstable for so long I just don't think about it.

---

But it's all right, when you're all in pain and you feel the rain come down
It's alright, when you find your way, then you see it disappear
It's alright....
Chris Cornell