dm-tool - Man Page
a tool to control the display manager
Examples (TL;DR)
- Show the greeter while keeping current desktop session open and waiting to be restored upon authentication by logged in user:
dm-tool switch-to-greeter - Lock the current session:
dm-tool lock - Switch to a specific user, showing an authentication prompt if required:
dm-tool switch-to-user username session - Add a dynamic seat from within a running LightDM session:
dm-tool add-seat xlocal name=value
Synopsis
dm-tool [ Options ] COMMAND [ ARGS ]
Description
dm-tool is a tool to communicate with the LightDM display manager.
Options
- -h, --help
Show help options
- --version
Show release version
- --session-bus
Attempt to connect to the display manager using the session bus. This is useful if you are running a display manager in a test mode. If this option is not present dm-tool will connect using the system bus.
- The following commands are available:
- switch-to-greeter
Switch to the greeter suitable for logging into a new session.
- switch-to-user USERNAME [SESSION]
Switch to a user session. If this user is already logged in then the display manager will switch to that session, otherwise a new session is started. If authentication is required a greeter will start to collect this. If the session option is provided then this session type will be used, otherwise the default for this user is used.
- switch-to-guest [SESSION]
Switch to a guest session. If the guest session is already active the display manager will switch to that session, otherwise the guest session is started. If the session option is provided then this session type will be used, otherwise the default for the guest user is used.
- lock
Lock the current seat. This will switch to a greeter with a hint that the screen is locked. You can return to this session by authenticating in the greeter.
- list-seats
List the active seats and sessions that are running.
- add-nested-seat
Start an X server inside a session and connect it to a display manager.
- add-local-x-seat DISPLAY_NUMBER
Connect an existing X server to the display manager.
- add-seat TYPE [NAME=VALUE...]
Add a dynamic seat.
Environment
- XDG_SEAT_PATH
Used by dm-tool to determine in which display manager session it's running. When executing dm-tool outside of a display-manager use its list-seats command to show active sessions and set the session to connect to with: export XDG_SEAT_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/SeatX where SeatX is one of the listed sessions.