MDM does no longer display its version

[karlchen]

Hello, Clem.

MDM 1.0.8 accepted a few commandline arguments. E.g. it was possible to query the MDM version by executing

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mdm --version

MDM 1.4.8 does no longer honour any commandline arguments. It will ignore them all and simply display its PID. Though

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man mdm

promises a different behaviour.
Would it be possible to re-add the old ability to query the MDM version by running

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mdm --version

in a future version again?
Thanks.

Karl

[clfarron4]

Just tested it on my Mint and ArchLinux boxes and they both give this:

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claire ~ % mdm --version
MDM 1.4.8
claire ~ % 

[karlchen]

Hello, clfarron4.

Good for you that it works for you. Strange that it does not do so here on more than one machine.

1.) Linux Mint 16 32-bit with Cinnamon 2.0.14:
This is where I executed

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mdm --version

and simply got back the PID of the running mdm process.

2.) Linux Mint 13 64-bit with Cinnamon 2.0.14 (backport):
Tried it here and the same result. No matter which commandline argument I pass to mdm it will always just return its PID.

These are two totally independent machines. Mint 16 brings along MDM 1.4.8 out of the box. Mint 13 got it because backports are activated. This is why I assumed it might be some kind of newly introduced programme bug.
Weird.

Karl

[karlchen]

Hm, found something on my Mint 13 64-bit machine in /var/log/syslog:
Whenever I tried to execute

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mdm --version

or

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mdm --help

a new entry of this type was written to syslog:

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Jan 11 23:55:39 voyager mdm[3696]: Another MDM is running under process ID: 1306
Jan 11 23:55:39 voyager mdm[3696]: Exiting...

I bet, if I check this on the Mint 16 system, the same phenomenon will be present there.
And one more bet: No entries will be written on Mint 14 with MDM 1.0.8 where the commandlines

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mdm --version

or

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mdm --help

do what you expect them to do.
Google has not yet returned a useful explanation ...

[karlchen]

What I suspect is that my little annoying problem may be related to these factors:

1. Both machines have got an NVidia graphics card, different NVidias, but still NVidia, and use the proprietary driver v319.32.

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   $ inxi -Gx
   Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA G86 [GeForce 8500 GT] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
              X.Org: 1.11.3 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: nouveau,vesa,fbdev) Resolution: 1280x1024@60.0hz 
              GLX Renderer: GeForce 8500 GT/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 319.32 Direct Rendering: Yes

2. As soon as the upstart-job mdm gets launched, there will be 2 mdm processes.

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   1191  1191  1191 ?        00:00:00   mdm
    1302  1302  1191 ?        00:00:00     mdm
    1330  1330  1330 tty8     00:00:52       Xorg
    1941  1941  1941 ?        00:00:00       x-session-manager
    2015  2015  2015 ?        00:00:00         ssh-agent
    2031  1941  1941 ?        00:00:00         cinnamon-settings
    2166  1941  1941 ?        00:00:00         cinnamon-launcher
    2210  1941  1941 ?        00:00:47           cinnamon

3. From v1.0.8 to v1.4.8 mdm has been converted from init.d startup to an upstart-job. (Hm, not really sure this would explain anything in this context.)

Karl

[clfarron4]

Ah, well I have an AMD card.