Reader Question: Do I Need a Display Manager?
I’ve been getting some pretty technical questions these days - questions that I’m just not smart enough to answer. I had a brilliant (I think) idea to handle those questions, though. Rather than sending back a “Duh..I dunno” response, I thought I’d tap into the obvious expertise of my readers. For a “New” Linux user blog - there’s a lot of very knowledgeable people around here.
So - I’ve created the 6th category on New Linux User: Reader Questions. This is the first post in the category and I need help answering it.
Question, Do you know if I did not use kdm,gdm or xdm what would come up at startup? Right now I am using xdm. Would I be able to login and maybe I would have to start X and fluxbox my self?
Anyone wanna tackle this one?
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6 opinions for Reader Question: Do I Need a Display Manager?
Justin
Mar 31, 2006 at 2:01 pm
What happens on a typical desktop Linux system on boot is that the display manager is started as root. If you disable the display manager, you will get a text shell asking you for a username and password. Once you type that in, you can start the graphical session by typing ’startx’ (although you may need to edit your .xinitrc file to start up a desktop environment, such as KDE or GNOME, as some distros don’t do this automatically). So the quick answer is - yes and yes.
Jon
Mar 31, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Ahhh…so is disabling (or uninstalling all *dm’s) the same as booting into Runlevel 3?
Justin
Mar 31, 2006 at 3:58 pm
I suppose, yeah.
It’s also worth noting that pressing Ctrl + Alt + F1 should bring you to the same login screen while the display manager is running (and pressing Ctrl + Alt + F7 brings you back)
AlecTavi
Apr 16, 2006 at 12:18 am
Just some caveats on what was posted above:
Different runlevels may do different things on different distributions. To see what your distribution does, examine the /etc/inittab file. For reference, look at the boot, init, login, and inittab man pages.
As for detailed information about what would come up if you did not use a display manager, that same inittab file should have a series of lines similar to this:
c1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty1 linux
c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty2 linux
c3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty3 linux
c6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty6 linux
These lines tell the init program to start login prompts on TTYs 1-6. A tty is a virtual terminal, and that is what the Ctrl-Alt-Fn keys switch between. Your particular distribution may use a program other than agetty, such as getty. The origin of these obscure names is the main purpose of the program: “get a tty”.
As this is a related issue, I would actually recommend that you investigate the “qingy” program, which probably does not come with your base distribution. Qingy is not getty, but is a graphical login prompt similar to display managers. The advantage is that it does not use the X-server. This is a security improvement over xdm, kdm, gdm, entrance, etc. because it does not require the X-server to be run as root. It also allows you to log in to text sessions without ever starting X at all. Take a look for it on google.
Jon
Apr 16, 2006 at 9:10 am
Hey Alec,
Thanks for the info - that’s really useful stuff. I’ll definitely take a look at Qingy.
J
Chris
Mar 30, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Hmm… sweet! [*../nice_site2.txt*]
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