# Web Greeter for LightDM

A modern, visually appealing greeter for LightDM, that allows to create web based themes with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

This is a try to update the [Antergos web-greeter](https://github.com/Antergos/web-greeter), following what they left.

As this is based on the [master release](https://github.com/Antergos/web-greeter/tree/master), which does some API changes, actual themes would need to do changes to work correctly.

Checkout [nody-greeter][nody-greeter], a greeter made in **Node.js** with **Electron**! (Actually, faster than Web Greeter)

## [See Live Demo][live_demo]

Gruvbox and Dracula themes!

## Features

- Create themes with HTML, CSS and JavaScript!
- Should work everywhere.
- JavaScript error handling, allowing to load the default theme.
- Themes could be simple, or very complex.
- Battery and brightness control.
- Tab completion for zsh and bash.

## Available distro packages

### Arch

- AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/web-greeter/

```sh
yay -S web-greeter
```

### Ubuntu

Download from the [latest release](https://github.com/JezerM/web-greeter/releases/latest) and
install with apt.

```sh
apt install ./web-greeter-VER.deb
```

## Dependencies
|                          |        arch         |        ubuntu        |       fedora        |       openSUSE       |
|--------------------------|---------------------|----------------------|---------------------|----------------------|
|**liblightdm-gobject**    |lightdm              |liblightdm-gobject-dev|lightdm-gobject-devel|liblightdm-gobject-1-0|
|**pygobject**             |python-gobject       |python3-gi            |pygobject3           |python3-gobject       |
|**pyqt5**                 |python-pyqt5         |python3-pyqt5         |python3-qt5          |python3-qt5           |
|**qt5-webengine**         |qt5-webengine        |libqt5webengine5      |qt5-qtwebengine      |libqt5-qtwebengine    |
|**gobject-introspection** |gobject-introspection|gobject-introspection |gobject-introspection|gobject-introspection |

### Build dependencies

- rsync
- zip
- make
- pyrcc5 (Should be installed with above dependencies)
- [cx_freeze](https://cx-freeze.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html) (and patchelf) (Optional)

### PIP
- PyGObject
- PyQt5
- PyQtWebEngine
- ruamel.yaml
- python-xlib

Install PIP dependencies with:
```sh
pip install -r requirements.txt
```

> ***NOTE*** Be sure to install pip libraries as root too, or use a venv to install these dependencies

## Download & Install
```sh
git clone https://github.com/JezerM/web-greeter.git
cd web-greeter
sudo pip install -r requirements.txt
sudo make install
```

This will build and install **web-greeter** in a zippy way, which compresses the python code as a zip and uses it as a binary. Either `sudo make install_freeze` to build and install with cx_freeze. The zippy method depends on the actual python interpreter and its libraries, so you could have problems when updating python or removing any dependency, while the cx_freeze method tries to fix this "problem".

See [latest release][releases].

## Theme JavaScript API
[Antergos][Antergos] documentation is no longer available, although it is accesible through [Web Archive][WebArchive]. Current and updated documentation is available at [gh-pages][gh-pages].

You can access the man-pages `man web-greeter` for some documentation and explanation. Also, you can explore the provided [themes](./themes) for real use cases.


Aditionally, you can install the TypeScript types definitions inside your theme with npm:

```sh
npm install nody-greeter-types
```

## Enable features
### Brightness control
To control the brightness inside the greeter, I recommend to use [acpilight][acpilight] replacement for `xbacklight`.

udev rules are needed to be applied before using it. Then, lightdm will need to be allowed to change backlight values, to do so add lightdm user to **video** group: `sudo usermod -a -G video lightdm`

If you don't want to or don't have a compatible device, disable it inside `/etc/lightdm/web-greeter.yml` (disabled by default)

### Battery status
`acpi` is the only tool you need (and a battery).

You can disable it inside `/etc/lightdm/web-greeter.yml` (disabled by default)

## Debugging
You can run the greeter from within your desktop session if you add the following line to the desktop file for your session located in `/usr/share/xsessions/`: `X-LightDM-Allow-Greeter=true`.

You have to log out and log back in after adding that line. Then you can run the greeter from command line.

Themes can be opened with a debug console if you set `debug_mode` as `true` inside `/etc/lightdm/web-greeter.yml`. Or, you could run the `web-greeter` with the parameter `--debug`. I recommend to use the last one, as it is easier and handy.

```sh
web-greeter --debug
```

> ***Note:*** Do not use `lightdm --test-mode` as it is not supported.

## Troubleshooting

Before setting **web-greeter** as your LightDM Greeter, you should make sure it does work also with LightDM:

- Run **web-greeter** as root
- Run `lightdm --test-mode`. Although it's not supported, it could help to debug lightdm.

### LightDM crashes and tries to recover over and over again

LightDM does this when the greeter crashes, so it could mean **web-greeter** was not installed correctly, or some dependencies were updated/removed after a distro update.

### Import errors

If you see something like this: `ImportError: libQt5WebEngineCore.so.5: undefined symbol: _ZNSt12out_of_rangeC1EPKc, version Qt_5`, check out this [StackOverflow response](https://stackoverflow.com/a/68811630).

With some PyQt5 import errors like `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets'`, check out this [GitHub response](https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder/issues/8952#issuecomment-499418456).

web-greeter related import errors:

- `AttributeError: module 'globals' has no attribute 'greeter'` means some exception happened inside the Browser constructor, maybe related to LightDM or PyQt5.
- `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'resources'` could mean `path/to/web-greeter-clone/web-greeter/resources.py` was not compiled with pyrcc5 in the build/install methods.

[antergos]: https://github.com/Antergos "Antergos"
[nody-greeter]: https://github.com/JezerM/nody-greeter "Nody Greeter"
[cx_freeze]: https://github.com/marcelotduarte/cx_Freeze "cx_Freeze"
[acpilight]: https://gitlab.com/wavexx/acpilight "acpilight"
[WebArchive]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190524032923/https://doclets.io/Antergos/web-greeter/stable "Web Archive"
[gh-pages]: https://jezerm.github.io/web-greeter/ "API Documentation"
[live_demo]: https://jezerm.github.io/web-greeter-themes/ "Live Demo"
[releases]: https://github.com/JezerM/web-greeter/releases "Releases"