No Logout option in Fedora 18

In Fedora 18, GNOME 3.6 has some more tweaks and changes to how the User menu works. One change that may trip up regular Fedora / gnome-shell users is that there is no “Logout” option in the user menu (the menu that drops down from your name in the top right corner of the shell).

Basically, the change is this:

if you only have one user set up on a system, and only have one Desktop environment installed (i.e. just GNOME) then the logout option is not shown.

However, this comes with the following caveat: if you install a new desktop other than GNOME3, you will need to manually restart the shell  (press Alt+F2, type ‘r’, and hit enter) or reboot for the logout option to start displaying.

I don’t care, just re-enable the logout in Fedora 18

if you only have one user, and only one desktop enviroment, and still want the log out option to display,  the GNOME developerss have also added in an option to be able to persistently keep the logout option in the user menu.

To make the logout option always appear:

  1. First open up the dconf editor (fedora package “dconf-editor”), and navigate to the org > gnome > shell key.
  2. Check the option “always-show-log-out” (pictured below in the screenshot), to always show the logout option. Note, however, that a restart of the shell or a reboot may be required for this option to start working.

 

21 thoughts on “No Logout option in Fedora 18

  1. Florian Müllner says:

    We already show the logout action if more than one session is available. The only problem (and what bug 689240 is about) is that we don’t update the visibility if sessions are installed/removed during the running session – a shell restart should be enough to update the menu correctly.

  2. if you only have one user set up on a system,
    OR
    only have one Desktop environment installed (i.e. just GNOME)

    Are you sure that the correct logic here is “OR”, not “AND”?

    From a common-sense viewpoint, a user would need to logout (and thus would need the menu item) if he needs to let another user in, OR wants to change the DE (and let’s say there are no other use cases). So, by De Morgan’s law, the menu item is not needed if he never needs to let another user in AND never changes the DE.

    • BartO says:

      What if I installed an update which required me to log out and back in, but I postponed that? Than, at one point, I would want to log out. It happens.

  3. lennart says:

    Thnxs for your post… helped me to get the “Logout”-Button back and my fears dissolved (just migrating from ubuntu to fedora)

  4. 龙龙Fred says:

    I don’t like this change cause if this computer in the public place…I need to logout when I leave.

  5. Alexander Korsunsky says:

    Thanks for the info!
    By the way, you don’t have to reboot the system or even logout. You can simply restart gnome-shell by pressing Alt-F2, typing “r” and enter.

  6. Ankur Sinha says:

    You can logout using “gnome-session-quit”, even if the logout option isn’t available:

    “alt + f2″ to open the prompt, “gnome-session-quit” [ENTER].

    Warm regards,
    Ankur.

    • Kostya Berger says:

      Thanks a lot :)))!!! Here, the missing link.
      And thanks to you others for showing the way to add the log out option.

  7. FedoraUser says:

    There are no need to run dconf editor to enable “Log Out” option in Fedora 18. Use dconf from shell:
    $ dconf read /org/gnome/shell/always-show-log-out
    false

    $dconf write /org/gnome/shell/always-show-log-out true

    Then just restart the system and “Log out” is present after login.

    • Edgar says:

      Hi FedoraUser,

      I have to reboot my system just to get a logout button? No kidding? Nowadays these kinds of small UI changes must be picked up instantly. Reminds me of the reboot requirement in RHEL6.0 just to add a partition on /dev/sda.

      I’m starting of thinking to move away from Gnome3 because of these issues.

      Kind regards, Edgar.

    • Edgar says:

      Hi FedoraUser,

      luckily, Alt-F2, “r” works to get the logout button back after performing the “dconf write” command. Great!

      Kind regards, Edgar.

  8. Mahony says:

    Thanks for the post. Just upgraded to F18, if I had not find this post I would have hated the upgrade. The gnome extensions and default choices are open to much debate. I want to alter this stuff myself. Why is it not easy configurable like in the good old days. Now it takes me many google sessions to do simple things like tweaking a menu-option. I really like gnome but it is these small details that make you wonder if I can recommend gnome3 to my dad.

  9. Kevin Ricks says:

    I got logout to appear by simply adding a 2nd user.
    You don’t even have to enable the 2nd account just add it.

    • David Picard says:

      I added 10 users and still no logout button – even rebooted a half dozen times. Of course, I’m using the useradd CLI as I needed to control the uid and gid assignments along with several other options more explicitly. Seems kind of brain dead to assume user addition would always happen through a UI on a Linux system… now I have to dig around and figure out which files to change to get the users to show on gdm…

  10. Ricardo says:

    Obrigado!

  11. Marlon says:

    Simple enough.
    First from the shell (no need to become root):
    $ dconf write /org/gnome/shell/always-show-log-out true
    Then from the Gnome prompt (Alt-F2),
    r
    Voilà.
    -Marlon.

    • Linux Freak says:

      Doesn’t seem to work for me with Fedora 20.

      $ sudo dconf read /org/gnome/shell/always-show-log-out
      true

      Yet, even after restarting the shell, or even after rebooting the host itself, I still do not have a “logout” option.

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