Debian windowmanager/display manager question

[Faust]

Small question but in Debian what is the command to reconfigure my display manager/text file to edit?
I want to set KDM to be my default display manager.

Also with XDM how do I make it open up blackbox when I log in instead of enlightenment?

[JH]

The easiest way is to use wdm that lets you select desired window manager on logging in (By default the last manager is used). Think that gdm and kdm let the same but I'm not sure.

[Calum]

kdm does do that, and so does gdm although i have seen versions of gdm that do not.

have a look in /etc/inittab * and see if there's already a line in there for kdm that you can uncomment, or perhaps you need to comment out the gdm lines if they preced the kdm ones? what display manager are you using now?

* or it might be a child script that inittab calls, i can't recall...

[ May 12, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: hopelessly outnumbered ]

[Faust]

Muah ha ha ha.  I bought a book called "Linux Complete" which was basically just a print out of a lot of man pages and how tos.  After slowly reading through the X windows section again I found it - theres a hidden file called .xinitrc in your home dir which holds the line "exec /usr/bin/[windowmanager]."  I just changed it from enlightenment to blackbox.  Still cant find how to change from XDM to KDM but I am slowly trying /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure * until I find the right * for display managers... I should get there soonish.  
Thanks for the help everyone!

[Pantso]

quote:Originally posted by Faust:
Muah ha ha ha.  I bought a book called "Linux Complete" which was basically just a print out of a lot of man pages and how tos.

We have the same book and it's great if I may add. Anyway, If I happened to see this thread earlier, perhaps I would have posted the exact same solution.     Good buy Faust.  

[Faust]

[shameless_plug]Yep it's great.  Nice *BIG* reference tome, very chunky reading.  Not what I would recomend for a newbie learning Linux for the first time but having that many how-tos in printed form beside your case is fantastic.  And it's only $20 US! [/shameless_plug]

[Pantso]

Yep. Especially the chapters about networking are certainly not for a newbie. Hell, even I got a headache when reading them.     All in all though, it's a great book and is worth the buy.

[Faust]

On the same subject, all new Australian linux users should invest in a copy of the Australian Personal Computing Magazines linux pocketbook and advanced linux pocketbook.  They're only $15 ish AUS each (about $7 US) and they are great for bringing a newbie up to speed quickly.  They even have linux cds on the covers.     (last I checked the linux pocketbook had red hat and the advanced linux pocketbook had debian.)

[Calum]

you are right there, i was thumbing through my copy of the first linux minibook yesterday (i think they are up to version 3 now?) and it is a very good beginning reference. the last one i saw was offering rh8 and mdk9 (the one i got had rh7.0 and turbolinux 6.1).

as for the issue with kdm, i have done this on my computer, it was easy, i am sure it is in the init script or somewhere, give me a day or so (i am not at home) and i will find the exact file that decides which display manager is used (unless somebody else posts first).

[Copperhead]

If you want to change default display managers, you can use the command update-rc.d defaults. See man update-rc.d


#Example (removing gdm and installing kdm as default display manager)

$ update-rc.d -n gdm remove

$ update-rc.d -n kdm defaults 99 01

Those two commands will show you what is to be done. If you are content with how they ran, rerun the commands without the -n option.

You must do these as ROOT.

[Faust]

Cool thanks copperhead I'll fix it all up tonight.  

[Calum]

well, too late to be of any use as usual but here's what i did to achieve the effect of changing from the default gdm to kdm on my ststem.

As i suspected, this is specific to a BSD style init, so those of you with SysV inits will find it slightly different. Edit: just noticed this is for Debian, i think they use SysV style init so this info is not applicable. I run slack 9 though, so a BSD init it is:

find the file /etc/rc.d/rc.4 (if not using BSD init then this is probably a directory containing individual files for each program to be started, if i remember rightly how SysV init works, and a lot of systems use runlevel 5 instead of runlevel 4 for the GUI interface so your mileage will vary) and open it with a text editor such as vi:
   

quote:#! /bin/sh
#
# rc.4      This file is executed by init(8) when the system is being
#      initialized for run level 4 (XDM)
#
# Version:   @(#)/etc/rc.d/rc.4   2.00   02/17/93
#
# Author:   Fred N. van Kempen, <[email protected]>
# At least 47% rewritten by:  Patrick J. Volkerding <[email protected]>
#

# Tell the viewers what's going to happen...
echo "Starting up X11 session manager..."

# 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

# error
echo
echo "Hey, you don't have KDM, GDM, or XDM.  Can't use runlevel 4 without"
echo "one of those installed."
sleep 30

# All done.

as you can see all i have done is commented out the lines that look for and start gdm, so the script skips them and goes straight over to using kdm instead. A better (perhaps) solution would have been to put the gdm lines beneath the kdm lines. it all depends on whether you want xdm or gdm to run in the unlikely event that your system suddenly can't find kdm anymore. his has never happened to me so it is moot.

[ May 14, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: hopelessly outnumbered ]

[ May 14, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: hopelessly outnumbered ]

[Copperhead]

That is more applicable to BSD style systems. On Debian, what you would want to edit is the directory of symlinks (eg /etc/rc*.d). Since Debian's runlevels differentiate from other Linux distros, what you would want to do is to just symlink a program/script in its respective directory, which is what the update-rc.d utility takes care of.

The only time you would want to physically create symlinks in a run-level directory (this is on Debian) would be if you are running a self-made script that doesn't "exit(0);", or if you have a two-part script that you wrote, or some jerkoff that doesn't know what he is doing wrote (a launcher and a closer.) The /etc/rc*.d directories all point to an executable file in /etc/init.d, so if you are symlinking, make sure you have the script/program in that directory, or a symlink in that directory (/etc/init.d) to where your executable is.

This is all good and dandy, but if you are a noob, save yourself the headache and just use update-rc.d, especially if you are adding daemons, or other compiled binaries.

[Calum]

is there any further reading i can do to find out the distinctions between SysV and the Debian method of init you just described? I know a little bit about the BSD style init but would like to gain enough knowledge to be confident in the other two styles too...

[Copperhead]

I guess you can search around on Debian's website. The information I posted here just comes from personal experience tinkering with the run-levels, and from reading a few archives on the Debian mailing list.  

If you are running Debian, you can look at this file here: /usr/share/doc/debian/FAQ/ch-customizing.html#s-booting
It basically gives you the difference between Debian's boot process than that of another distro's (like Red Hat.) It also explains how Debian's run-levels are different and how you adjust to them.

As far as actual BSD vs Debian information, I guess I will have to look around. I just started messing with FreeBSD a few weeks ago, but I have been so busy I haven't had a whole lot of time to play with it. From what you posted, I gather that the process seems to differ in that BSD uses some hard coded scripts in its run-level directories where Debian has a collection of symlinks that point to binaries in the /etc/init.d directory. If you read that file, it will give you enough information where you will know the difference, since you are already somewhat familiar in the way BSD works.

If you don't have Debian installed, I can post the contents of that file up here for you if you want.