<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org" />
<title>xdm</title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7" />
<link rel="HOME" title="Slackware Linux Essentials" href="index.html" />
<link rel="UP" title="X Configuration" href="x-window-system.html" />
<link rel="PREVIOUS" title="xwmconfig" href="x-window-system-xwmconfig.html" />
<link rel="NEXT" title="Booting" href="booting.html" />
<link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="docbook.css" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
</head>
<body class="SECT1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084"
alink="#0000FF">
<div class="NAVHEADER">
<table summary="Header navigation table" width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0"
cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<th colspan="3" align="center">Slackware Linux Essentials</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="10%" align="left" valign="bottom"><a href="x-window-system-xwmconfig.html"
accesskey="P">Prev</a></td>
<td width="80%" align="center" valign="bottom">Chapter 6 X Configuration</td>
<td width="10%" align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="booting.html"
accesskey="N">Next</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr align="LEFT" width="100%" />
</div>
<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>
</div>
<div class="NAVFOOTER">
<hr align="LEFT" width="100%" />
<table summary="Footer navigation table" width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0"
cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="33%" align="left" valign="top"><a href="x-window-system-xwmconfig.html"
accesskey="P">Prev</a></td>
<td width="34%" align="center" valign="top"><a href="index.html"
accesskey="H">Home</a></td>
<td width="33%" align="right" valign="top"><a href="booting.html"
accesskey="N">Next</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="33%" align="left" valign="top"><tt class="COMMAND">xwmconfig</tt></td>
<td width="34%" align="center" valign="top"><a href="x-window-system.html"
accesskey="U">Up</a></td>
<td width="33%" align="right" valign="top">Booting</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>
