Startup manager

supernov · Apprentice Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 164

Hi all,

Ok, now that I installed and tweaked my beautiful linux-xfce4 installation, I would like to make it appealing to use for my girlfriend. I would like to have a startup-screen mask all of the linux verbose code in the beginning and have a nice graphical login thingy.

I'm sure it's around, so what do you guys/girls recommend? It should be easy to turn off as well, since I like to see that verbose stuff when I'm tweaking ofcourse.

Thanx! Vincent

Sith_Happens · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 2:16 am Post subject:

Sure, to hide the verbose startup, you want to use fbsplash, part of the gensplash project. Check out this how-to on the gentoo wiki. It's much better than the how-to on the forums IMHO. It's really simple to set up, and If you have any questions just post them here and I'll walk you through it. fbsplash can run in silent and verbose modes, so your girlfriend will see a nice picture and/or progress bar, and you can press F2 to switch to verbose mode. It can also be configured to run in verbose mode by default (my setup). My only addition to the how-to would be, if your emerging the bootsplash-themes package, use the --oneshot flag, otherwise when you try to update your systems dependencies, portage will want to install bootsplash, a predecessor to fbsplash.

As far as a graphical login, you could use XDM, KDM, or GDM. The latter two are associated with KDE and Gnome respectively. The latter two have a lot of eyecandy built in, and are very easy to make look good. Most people disregard XDM, but here is a great how-to on jazzing it up. Since your using XFCE, I'm sure you can appreciate the advantages of XDM over the bulkier KDM and GDM. I'm sure you girlfriend will appreciate it too. :wink:

XDM comes with xorg-x11, and the others you will have to install seperately. To have your login handled by one of the DM's, just add it to your startup with rc-update. If you want XFCE to start on login, you should define it either globally in /etc/rc.conf, or on a user by user basis in ~/.xsession (it works just like ~/.xinitrc with startx).
_________________
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supernov · Apprentice Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 164

Great! How I love the configurability of Linux. Going to try to setup a complete automatic login for mrs.

Thanks for the help, I'll post my experiences if needed.

A beer on me, cheerz, Vincent

supernov · Apprentice Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 164

Right, XDM is good enough for me and indeed also because it doesn't need the entire kde-base.

I've made it prettier as well which is nice. However, I noticed when I don't add the xsession file, it starts up in X, but I'm unable to start xfce4. Is there a way to startup with xdm and when I don't want to login using X, to go back to the pure shell?

Gentoonie · Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 2:54 pm Post subject:

im using GDM for my xfce4 system, its beatiful and functionable, and you should be able to start into xfce by deafult.
For pure shell just press

Sith_Happens · Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 3:19 pm Post subject:

supernov · Apprentice Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 164

Thanks Gentoonie and Sith!

I'm now running a nicely configured xdm. Gentoonie, perhaps I'll have a look at GDM, though it needs a lot of dependencies and still does the same.

I like Linux and Gentoo over Windows, because of the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) and the amount of control I have. I like to have a system which does everything I want and nothing more, don't need a fancier loging than I have now.

Sith_Happens · Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 9:55 pm Post subject:

Glad it worked, although I would say the problem with windows is it's too simple. It's made by simple minded people for simple minded people (computer wise that is). The result is it's an operating you grandmother can boot and play quake in, but it's so full of bugs and holes she'll be calling you to fix it every two weeks.
_________________
"That question was less stupid; though you asked it in a profoundly stupid way."
I'm the brains behind Jackass! | Tutorials: Shorewall

supernov · Apprentice Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 164

Just one more question;

The colour-depth is rather low, can I change that as well?

Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:23 pm Post subject:

You can change the color depth of the vesafb-tng framebuffer by changing the third number in the video statement in your grub.conf, i.e. the 32 in video=vesafb:1280x1024-32@60. I would think that the color depth in XDM would be the same as the setting in your xorg.conf.
_________________
"That question was less stupid; though you asked it in a profoundly stupid way."
I'm the brains behind Jackass! | Tutorials: Shorewall

supernov · Apprentice Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 164

Right, indeed, changing the depth in xorg.conf did it. Boy I feel stupid about these things. Great you're willing to teach the same things over and over again to new people.

The reason I got confused was, the picture showed up perfectly in the Xfce4 display, so I guess that colour-depth is set elsewhere.

Question nr. 1000: I now have the shutdown option working in xfce4.2. But, I find the proces a bit confusing for people who don't know what to expect. When I shutdown, xfce4 shuts down, falls back to xdm (which could be confusing since it wants you to login), then falls back to the pure shell (again asking to login) and then shuts down. Isn't it possible to just have a black screen during the entire proces?

Sith_Happens · Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 2:11 pm Post subject:

When you exit out of your X session, it switches from vt7 to whatever vt XDM is running in. Come to think of it I'm not exactly sure which vt XDM is running in, it could be running in vt7, along with X, but I'm not sure. Then, the system sends the TERM and KILL signals to all proccesses, killing XDM and dropping you to the shell login. Then, the system actually shuts down. My geuss is that XFCE4 has a script it runs when it shutsdown, seeing as it logs you off, then issue the shutdown command automatically. If you edited that script you could add something like killall xdm, then it would drop straight to the shell login. My confusion is, I thought that a pretty shutdown is handled by fbsplash. The pretty shutdown must be going on in vt1, and XDM must be running in some other vt, and logs you into vt7. If you could somehow configure XDM to run in vt1, then when you exited your X session it would bring you to vt1, and since you had it kill XDM outright, it should just show the silent shutdown handled by fbsplash. Right?
_________________
"That question was less stupid; though you asked it in a profoundly stupid way."
I'm the brains behind Jackass! | Tutorials: Shorewall

supernov · Apprentice Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 164

Now that works as well, and you're also possible to tell fbsplash to blank all vt's. However, that wasn't nexessary.

Thanks!