slackware-current/slackbook/html/x-window-system-xdm.html
Patrick J Volkerding 75a4a592e5 Slackware 13.37
Mon Apr 25 13:37:00 UTC 2011
Slackware 13.37 x86_64 stable is released!

Thanks to everyone who pitched in on this release: the Slackware team,
the folks producing upstream code, and linuxquestions.org for providing
a great forum for collaboration and testing.

The ISOs are off to be replicated, a 6 CD-ROM 32-bit set and a
dual-sided
32-bit/64-bit x86/x86_64 DVD.  Please consider supporting the Slackware
project by picking up a copy from store.slackware.com.  We're taking
pre-orders now, and offer a discount if you sign up for a subscription.

As always, thanks to the Slackware community for testing, suggestions,
and feedback.  :-)

Have fun!
2018-05-31 22:45:18 +02:00

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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
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<td width="80%" align="center" valign="bottom">Chapter 6 X Configuration</td>
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<div class="SECT1">
<h1 class="SECT1"><a id="X-WINDOW-SYSTEM-XDM" name="X-WINDOW-SYSTEM-XDM">6.5 <tt
class="COMMAND">xdm</tt></a></h1>
<p>As Linux becomes more and more useful as a desktop operating system, many users find
it desirable for the machine to boot straight into a graphical environment. For this, you
will need to tell Slackware to boot straight into X, and assign a graphical login
manager. Slackware ships with three graphical login tools, <tt
class="COMMAND">xdm</tt>(1), <tt class="COMMAND">kdm</tt>, and <tt
class="COMMAND">gdm</tt>(1).</p>
<p><tt class="COMMAND">xdm</tt> is the graphical login manager shipped with the X.org
system. It's ubiquitous, but not as fully features as alternatives. <tt
class="COMMAND">kdm</tt> is the graphical login manager shipped with KDE, The K Desktop
Environment. Finally, <tt class="COMMAND">gdm</tt> is the login manager shipped with
GNOME. Any of the choices will allow you to log in as any user, and choose what desktop
you wish to use.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Slackware doesn't include a nice program like <tt
class="COMMAND">xwmconfig</tt> for choosing what login manager to use, so if all three
are installed you may have to do some editing to choose your preference. But first, we'll
discuss how to boot into a graphical environment.</p>
<p>In order to start X at boot, you need to boot into run-level 4. Run-levels are just a
way of telling <tt class="COMMAND">init</tt>(8) to do something different when it starts
the OS. We do this by editing the config file for <tt class="COMMAND">init</tt>, <tt
class="FILENAME">/etc/inittab</tt>.</p>
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<pre class="PROGRAMLISTING">
# These are the default runlevels in Slackware:
# 0 = halt
# 1 = single user mode
# 2 = unused (but configured the same as runlevel 3)
# 3 = multiuser mode (default Slackware runlevel)
# 4 = X11 with KDM/GDM/XDM (session managers)
# 5 = unused (but configured the same as runlevel 3)
# 6 = reboot
# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:3:initdefault:
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>In order to make Slackware boot to a graphical environment, we just change the 3 to a
4.</p>
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<pre class="PROGRAMLISTING">
# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:4:initdefault:
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Now Slackware will boot into runlevel 4 and execute <tt
class="FILENAME">/etc/rc.d/rc.4</tt>. This file starts up X and calls whatever login
manager you've chosen. So, how do we choose login managers? There are a few ways to do
this, and I'll explain them after we look at <tt class="FILENAME">rc.4</tt>.</p>
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<pre class="PROGRAMLISTING">
# Try to use GNOME's gdm session manager:
if [ -x /usr/bin/gdm ]; then
exec /usr/bin/gdm -nodaemon
fi
# Not there? OK, try to use KDE's kdm session manager:
if [ -x /opt/kde/bin/kdm ]; then
exec /opt/kde/bin/kdm -nodaemon
fi
# If all you have is XDM, I guess it will have to do:
if [ -x /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm ]; then
exec /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon
fi
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>As you can see here, <tt class="FILENAME">rc.4</tt> first checks to see if <tt
class="COMMAND">gdm</tt> is executable, and if so runs it. Second on the list is <tt
class="COMMAND">kdm</tt>, and finally <tt class="COMMAND">xdm</tt>. One way of choosing a
login manager is to simply remove the ones you don't wish to use using <tt
class="COMMAND">removepkg</tt>. You can find out more about <tt
class="COMMAND">removepkg</tt> in <a href="package-management.html">Chapter 18</a>.</p>
<p>Optionally, you can remove the executable permission from those files that you don't
want to use. We discuss <tt class="COMMAND">chmod</tt> in <a
href="filesystem-structure.html">Chapter 9</a>.</p>
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<pre class="SCREEN">
<samp class="PROMPT">#</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">chmod -x /usr/bin/gdm</kbd>
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Finally, you can just comment out the lines for the login manager you don't want to
use.</p>
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<pre class="PROGRAMLISTING">
# Try to use GNOME's gdm session manager:
# if [ -x /usr/bin/gdm ]; then
# exec /usr/bin/gdm -nodaemon
# fi
# Not there? OK, try to use KDE's kdm session manager:
if [ -x /opt/kde/bin/kdm ]; then
exec /opt/kde/bin/kdm -nodaemon
fi
# If all you have is XDM, I guess it will have to do:
if [ -x /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm ]; then
exec /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon
fi
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Any lines preceded by the hash mark (<var class="LITERAL">#</var>) are considered
comments and the shell silently passes them. Thus, even if <tt class="COMMAND">gdm</tt>
is installed and executable, the shell (in this case <tt class="COMMAND">bash</tt>) won't
bother checking for it.</p>
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