8.10 upgrade: missing guest session

[Techie]

I upgraded from 8.04.1 & everything appears to be running fine. Other then the new guest function is missing from the list. I double checked & the fast user applet is installed. Any ideas ?

[LocutusMIT]

It's only available from the FUSA after a user has logged in. The designers saw the presence of a guest user account on the login screen as a security hole, so they decided to restrict its activation to permanent users.

I can see their point to some extent-- I don't want people able to login randomly to my personal desktop without my express permission even if they'd have no access to anything but the temporary account.

However, I'd like the option of enabling a login screen guest user on the terminal in my living room. As it stands, if I have a guest over, I need to give them an account on the computer, then delete it when they leave. Or I could setup a "guest" account with no password, which I'd need to clean out constantly (I have three housemates, and there are guests over all the time).

[GH68]

The guest session was missing after my upgrade as well. What I had to do was to install the package gdm-guest-session. At the next login my guest session worked.

My convenient(?) solution, however, for having guest access on the login screen is to create ordinary accounts with limited privileges but WITH a password. I then give the user the name "Guest (The password is 'PASSWORD')". In this way I have created guest accounts with three different languages (using the .xinitrc to set the language correctly for the session) and the users show up quite nicely on the logon screen with the corresponding flags as profile pictures and an intuitive login instruction contained in the account name itself.

[Techie]

The guest session was missing after my upgrade as well. What I had to do was to install the package gdm-guest-session. At the next login my guest session worked.

Thanks for the tip. I ended up taking the rather long method & decided to do a clean install of 8.10. Which cured the problem as well. I'll remember the tip for future reference.