configuration for gdmgreeter

[Simon Andrews]

michael wrote:
> I've tried and tried but failed and failed to determine where the
> setting is for the delay post wrong user/pass at the gdmgreeter screen.
> It current seems about 90 secs which is a bit too long

Unless you've changed something those timeouts sound very long.  Our 
systems allow a retry after about 5 seconds or so.

If you're seeing the same effect for both console and ssh then it's not 
going to be a gdm setting but rather something related to pam.

The normal place to configure this is in /etc/login.defs where you can 
specify something like:

LOGIN_TIMEOUT 20

.. but this isn't set by default in fedora.  You can also get the same 
effect by modifying files in /etc/pam.d using the pam_tally module. 
Again this is also not set by default in fedora.

Another possibility is that you have a misconfigured /etc/nsswitch.conf 
file, such that logins which fail to authenticate against /etc/passwd 
are trying to contact an unavailable nis or ldap server.

If you're only using local authentication then your nsswitch file for 
logins should read:

passwd:     files
shadow:     files
group:      files


.. if you have anything in addition to files try removing it and seeing 
if your retry times fall considerably.

Hope this helps

Simon.