XFCE 4.8.0 logs out instead of shutting down

[Gilbert Sullivan]

On 08/22/2011 08:42 AM, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> On lun., 2011-08-22 at 08:03 -0400, Gilbert Sullivan wrote:
>> I'm not sure this is related directly, but in Debian testing GDM became
>> obsolete. Nowadays new installations of Debian testing with Xfce use
>> XDM. That results in being able to only log out (no poweroff or reboot)
>> with a standard account. I used visudo to grant permissions to use the
>> scripts to regular users and created launchers for them so that they
>> could shut down and restart in a more-or-less familiar manner. I'm not
>> sure what the Debian maintainers of Xfce are planning, but using GDM3 is
>> for the birds. It drags a ton of dependencies and does a fair job of
>> breaking Xfce right now -- unless I'm very careful. I wound up
>> re-installing a test system after experimenting with GDM3.
>
> I didn't notice gdm had been removed from testing. We are in the process
> of switching to lightdm, which works pretty fine wrt. setting up
> policykit/consolekit permissions.
>>
>> I also tried SLiM on a test system, and it worked pretty well with Xfce
>> (and is prettier than XDM), but I ran into a few little problems and
>> decided to stick with what Debian testing is installing as the default
>> DM these days -- at least until the dust settles down a bit.
>
> You an install lightdm package right now, and it should fix your
> problems. Thanks for the notice about xdm though.

Okay, so I installed lightdm. And it works beautifully -- just as you 
said it would. (Thank you!) On all installations -- old ones in which 
gdm was the default DM and new ones in which xdm was the default DM -- 
the installation goes flawlessly and everything (permissions for actions 
in the dialogs and in Thunar, for instance) suddenly begins working 
properly again! Very nice!

However, on all of the older installations (Debian testing installed 
with xdm as the default DM) aptitude wanted to remove task-xfce-desktop 
when I removed xdm. I let it do so -- since it didn't want to actually 
remove any of the Xfce components, but I'd be a little happier if 
aptitude's audit/recommendations dialog wasn't suggesting that I install 
task-gnome-desktop, task-kde-desktop, task-lxde-desktop, or 
task-xfce-desktop. It's not that this is a problem, per se, but I'm 
concerned that the package manager might do something screwy later on 
with respect to the metapackage and its "dependencies". As it is, 
aptitude still won't let me install task-xfce-desktop without pulling 
xdm into the mix.

I think it's odd that the Debian testing package managers went with xdm 
as the default DM for Xfce when lightdm works so beautifully (and when 
xdm works so badly).

Again, I thank you for your suggestion. It has greatly improved the end 
user experience for the folks using these workstations here.

And my apologies for side-tracking this thread -- since it appears that 
my issue had no direct bearing on the original post, other than the 
similarity of symptoms.

Regards,
Gilbert