Graphical console greeter for greetd, fork of tuigreet for a more modern and hackable codebase suitable for future extension.

tuigreet provides a terminal-based authentication interface with session management, user selection, and power controls. The upstream project includes session launching from desktop files, username/session persistence, NSS-backed user menus, themeable UI components, and multi-language support.

This fork, as per its motivation to maintain tuigreet with much-desired features and stability, extends the original with TOML-based configuration (supporting both user and system config files with hot-reload), environment variable mapping for all options, detailed error messages with source context for config issues, and exposes core functionality as a library.

Additional, and perhaps less relevant, work includes NixOS VM-based integration tests, various bug fixes (session wrapper behavior, UID handling, padding semantics, status bar rendering) and so on.

The default configuration of tuigreet is quite minimal, visually speaking. It only displays the authentication prompt and some minor information in the status bar. You may additionally print your system's /etc/issue at the top of the prompt with --issue, and the current date & time using --time. The time can also be customized with the --time-format flag. It is also possible to include a custom, one-line greeting message instead of /etc/issue using the --greeting flag.

The initial prompt container will be 80 columns wide. You might want to change this using the --width flag in the case you need more space, e.g., to account for larger PAM challenge messages. Please refer to usage information (--help) for more customization options. Various padding settings are available through the *-padding options.

You can instruct tuigreet to remember the last username that successfully opened a session with the --remember option (that way, the username field will be pre-filled). Similarly, the command and session configuration can be retained between runs with the --remember-session option (when using this, the --cmd value is overridden by manual selections). You can also remember the selected session per user with the --remember-user-session flag. In this case, the selected session will only be saved on successful authentication.

You may change the command that will be executed after opening a session by hitting F2 and amending the command. Alternatively, you can list the system-declared sessions (or custom ones) by hitting F3. Power options are available through F12.

This fork is currently not packaged anywhere. A Nix flake is provided, and you may build from source if you are interested in using the fork. Should you wish to package this for your distribution, do feel free to update the readme with per-distribution instructions.

This fork is not packaged in Nixpkgs, but it is trivial to use the Nixpkgs derivation with the updated source information, should you wish to run it. For example, you may create an overlay to override pkgs.tuigreet as follows:

[
   (prev: {
      tuigreet = prev.tuigreet.overrideAttrs {
         src = prev.fetchFromGitHub {
            owner = "NotAShelf";
            repo = "tuigreet";
            tag = "0.9.2"; # update this with the tag you want to use
            hash = ""; # update this with the appropriate hash for your tag
         };
      };
   }
]

Additionally you may get it from the flake provided in this repository. In which case you may use the default or tuigreet packages. The easiest way of doing so is creating an overlay as above but point tuigreet to inputs.tuigreet.packages.${prev.hostPlatform.system}.tuigreet instead of overriding the src. This will completely replace the derivation, and build with the correct source automatically.

Building Tuigreet from source requires an installation of Rust's stable toolchain. Currently 1.90 and above is required. You may use the Nix devshell provided by the repository, or install it using something like rustup.

# Clone the repository and navigate to it
$ git clone https://github.com/NotAShelf/tuigreet && cd tuigreet

# Build in release mode
$ cargo build --release

# You may then move it to somewhere you can use it. If on NixOS, refer to above
# steps instead of trying to copy the binary.
# $ mv target/release/tuigreet /usr/local/bin/tuigreet

# If cache is missing or owned by the wrong user, you may run the following
# commands to create it, or to fix the permissions.
$ mkdir /var/cache/tuigreet
$ chown greeter:greeter /var/cache/tuigreet
$ chmod 0755 /var/cache/tuigreet

Pre-built binaries of tuigreet for several architectures can be found in the releases section of this repository. The tip prerelease is continuously built and kept in sync with the master branch.

Tests from the default features should run without any special consideration by running cargo test.

If you intend to run the whole test suite, you will need to perform some setup. One of our features uses NSS to list and filter existing users on the system, and in order not to rely on actual users being created on the host, we use libnss_wrapper to mock responses from NSS. Without this, the tests would use the real user list from your system and probably fail because it cannot find the one it looks for.

# After installing `libnss_wrapper` on your system (or compiling it to get the`.so`)
# you can run those specific tests as such:
$ export NSS_WRAPPER_PASSWD=contrib/fixtures/passwd
$ export NSS_WRAPPER_GROUP=contrib/fixtures/group
$ LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/libnss_wrapper.so cargo test --features nsswrapper nsswrapper_ # to run those tests specifically
$ LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/libnss_wrapper.so cargo test --all-features # to run the whole test suite

Edit /etc/greetd/config.toml and set the command setting to use tuigreet:

[terminal]
vt = 1

[default_session]
command = "tuigreet --cmd sway"
user = "greeter"

Please refer to greetd's wiki for more information on setting up greetd.

tuigreet supports TOML configuration files in addition to command-line options. Configuration files are loaded from:

1. ~/.config/tuigreet/config.toml (user config)
2. /etc/tuigreet/config.toml (system config)
3. Custom path via --config <path>

Configuration priority: CLI args > environment variables > user config > system config > defaults

[display]
show_time = true
greeting = "Welcome to the system!"
align_greeting = "center"
issue = false

[layout]
width = 60
window_padding = 2
container_padding = 1
prompt_padding = 1

[layout.widgets]
time_position = "top"      # "top", "bottom", "default", "hidden"
status_position = "bottom" # "top", "bottom", "default", "hidden"

[remember]
username = true
session = false
user_session = true

[user_menu]
enabled = true
min_uid = 1000
max_uid = 60000

[secret]
mode = "characters"  # "hidden" or "characters"
characters = "*"

[keybindings]
command = 2   # F2
sessions = 3  # F3
power = 12    # F12

[session]
sessions_dirs = ["/usr/share/wayland-sessions", "/usr/share/xsessions"]
xsessions_dirs = []
environments = []

[power]
use_setsid = false

[theme]
border = "white"
text = "green"
time = "blue"
container = "black"
title = "cyan"
greet = "yellow"
prompt = "magenta"
input = "white"
action = "bright-blue"
button = "bright-red"

All configuration options can also be set via environment variables. The naming convention is TUIGREET_<SECTION>_<KEY> for nested options, or TUIGREET_<KEY> for top-level options:

# General configuration
export TUIGREET_DEBUG=true
export TUIGREET_LOG_FILE="/custom/path/tuigreet.log"

# Display options
export TUIGREET_TIME=true
export TUIGREET_TIME_FORMAT="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"
export TUIGREET_GREETING="Welcome!"
export TUIGREET_ISSUE=false
export TUIGREET_ALIGN_GREETING=center  # left, center, right

# Layout configuration
export TUIGREET_WIDTH=80
export TUIGREET_WINDOW_PADDING=1
export TUIGREET_CONTAINER_PADDING=1
export TUIGREET_PROMPT_PADDING=1

# Widget positioning
export TUIGREET_TIME_POSITION=top      # default, top, bottom, hidden
export TUIGREET_STATUS_POSITION=bottom # default, top, bottom, hidden

# Remember options
export TUIGREET_REMEMBER_USERNAME=true
export TUIGREET_REMEMBER_SESSION=false
export TUIGREET_REMEMBER_USER_SESSION=true

# User menu configuration
export TUIGREET_USER_MENU=true
export TUIGREET_MIN_UID=1000
export TUIGREET_MAX_UID=60000

# Secret display
export TUIGREET_SECRET_MODE=characters  # hidden, characters
export TUIGREET_SECRET_CHARACTERS="●"

# Session configuration
export TUIGREET_COMMAND="sway"
export TUIGREET_SESSIONS_DIRS="/usr/share/wayland-sessions:/custom/sessions"
export TUIGREET_XSESSIONS_DIRS="/usr/share/xsessions"
export TUIGREET_SESSION_WRAPPER="systemd-cat -t sway"
export TUIGREET_XSESSION_WRAPPER="startx"
export TUIGREET_ENVIRONMENTS="WAYLAND_DISPLAY:DISPLAY"

# Power options
export TUIGREET_USE_SETSID=false

# Keybindings (F-key numbers)
export TUIGREET_KB_COMMAND=2   # F2
export TUIGREET_KB_SESSIONS=3  # F3
export TUIGREET_KB_POWER=12    # F12

# Individual theme components
export TUIGREET_THEME_BORDER=white
export TUIGREET_THEME_TEXT=green
export TUIGREET_THEME_TIME=blue
export TUIGREET_THEME_CONTAINER=black
export TUIGREET_THEME_TITLE=cyan
export TUIGREET_THEME_GREET=yellow
export TUIGREET_THEME_PROMPT=magenta
export TUIGREET_THEME_INPUT=white
export TUIGREET_THEME_ACTION=bright-blue
export TUIGREET_THEME_BUTTON=bright-red

# Or use legacy theme format (semicolon-separated)
export TUIGREET_THEME="border=white;text=green;time=blue;container=black"

Configuration files are automatically monitored for changes and hot-reloaded when modified. This allows you to adjust settings without restarting the greeter.

tuigreet makes an effort to include detailed context with line numbers and source code snippets to help identify and fix configuration issues. For example:

TOML parsing error at line 5, column 15:
   4 | [layout]
   5 | width = "invalid_number"
        |         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ expected integer, found string
   6 | window_padding = 2

The available sessions are fetched from desktop files in /usr/share/xsessions and /usr/share/wayland-sessions. If you want to provide custom directories, you can set the --sessions arguments with a colon-separated list of directories for tuigreet to fetch session definitions some other place.

greetd only accepts environment-less commands to be used to start a session. Therefore, if your desktop environment requires either arguments or environment variables, you will need to create a wrapper script and refer to it in an appropriate desktop file.

For example, to run X11 Gnome, you may need to start it through startx and configure your ~/.xinitrc (or an external xinitrc with a wrapper script):

exec gnome-session

To run Wayland Gnome, you would need to create a wrapper script akin to the following:

XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session gnome-session

Then refer to your wrapper script in a custom desktop file (in a directory declared with the -s/--sessions option):

Name=Wayland Gnome
Exec=/path/to/my/wrapper.sh

Two options allows you to automatically wrap run commands around sessions started from desktop files, depending on whether they come /usr/share/wayland-sessions or /usr/share/xsessions: --sessions-wrapper and --xsessions-wrapper. With this, you can prepend another command on front of the sessions you run to set up the required environment to run these kinds of sessions.

By default, unless you change it, all X11 sessions (those picked up from /usr/share/xsessions) are prepended with startx /usr/bin/env, so the X11 server is started properly.

Two power actions are possible from tuigreet, shutting down (through shutdown -h now) and rebooting (with shutdown -r now) the machine. This requires that those commands be executable by regular users, which is not the case on some distros.

To alleviate this, there are two options that can be used to customize the commands that are run: --power-shutdown and --power-reboot. The provided commands must be non-interactive, meaning they will not be able to print anything or prompt for anything. If you need to use sudo or doas, they will need to be configured to run passwordless for those specific commands.

An example for /etc/greetd/config.toml:

[default_session]
command = "tuigreet --power-shutdown 'sudo systemctl poweroff'"

Optionally, a user can be selected from a menu instead of typing out their name, with the --user-menu option, this will present all users returned by NSS at the time tuigreet was run, with a UID within the acceptable range. The values for the minimum and maximum UIDs are selected as follows, for each value:

• A user-provided value, through --user-menu-min-uid or --user-menu-max-uid;
• Or, the available values for UID_MIN or UID_MAX from /etc/login.defs;
• Or, hardcoded 1000 for minimum UID and 60000 for maximum UID.

A theme specification can be given through the --theme argument to control some of the colors used to draw the UI. This specification string must have the following format: component1=color;component2=color[;...] where the component is one of the value listed in the table below, and the color is a valid ANSI color name as listed in the ratatui repository.

Mind that the specification string include semicolons, which are command delimiters in most shells, hence, you should enclose it in single-quotes so it is considered a single argument instead.

Please note that we can only render colors as supported by the running terminal. In the case of the Linux virtual console, those colors might not look as good as one may think. Your mileage may vary.

Below is a screenshot of the greeter with the following theme applied:

`border=magenta;text=cyan;prompt=green;time=red;action=blue;button=yellow;container=black;input=red`:

Which results in the following:

Following the original source, this project is made available under GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3). See LICENSE for more details on the exact conditions. An online copy is provided here.