XDM
Related articles
From XDM manual page:
- Xdm manages a collection of X displays, which may be on the local host or remote servers. The design of xdm was guided by the needs of X terminals as well as The Open Group standard XDMCP, the X Display Manager Control Protocol. Xdm provides services similar to those provided by init, getty and login on character terminals: prompting for login name and password, authenticating the user, and running a "session."
XDM provides a simple and straightforward graphical login prompt.
Contents
Installation
Install the xorg-xdm package. Then enable xdm.service
.
If you would like to use an Arch Linux theme for XDM, you can optionally install the xdm-archlinux package. If installing the latter package, then do not enable xdm.service
, but instead enable xdm-archlinux.service
.
Configuration
Defining the session
Unlike many more modern display managers such as GDM or LightDM, XDM does not source available sessions from .desktop files located in the /usr/share/xsessions
directory. As such, XDM does not have a 'session menu.' Instead, XDM will execute the .xinitrc
file in the home directory. See Xinitrc#Configuration for details.
Ensure that the .xinitrc
file in your home directory is executable. To do this use the following command:
$ chmod 700 ~/.xinitrc
Theming
For the exact meanings of the options discussed below, see the manual page of xdm. The configuration file is located in /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources
, notice that if you installed xdm-archlinux the configuration file will instead be located in /etc/X11/archlinux/xdm/Xresources
.
Background wallpaper
You can use a program such as qiv to set the background in XDM:
- Install qiv
- Make a directory to store background images, e.g.
/root/backgrounds
or/usr/local/share/backgrounds
- Place your images in the directory.
- Edit
/etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0
. Change thexconsole
command to:
/usr/bin/qiv -zr /root/backgrounds/*
Font
- Edit
/etc/X11/xdm/Xresources
. Add/replace the following defines:
xlogingreetFont: -adobe-helvetica-bold-o-normal--20------iso8859-1 xloginfont: -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--14------iso8859-1 xloginpromptFont: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--14------iso8859-1 xloginfailFont: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--14------iso8859-1
Login dialog positioning
This configuration will move the login dialog to the bottom right of the screen.
xlogin*frameWidth: 1 xlogin*innerFramesWidth: 1 xlogin*logoPadding: 0 xlogin*geometry: 300x175-0-0
Removing the logo
Comment out the logo defines:
#xlogin*logoFileName: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/pixmaps/xorg.xpm #xlogin*logoFileName: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/pixmaps/xorg-bw.xpm
Multiple X sessions & Login in the window
With the Xdmcp enable, you can easily run multiple X sessions simultaneously on the same machine.
# X -query ip_xdmcp_serverĀ :2
This will launch the second session, in window you need xorg-server-xephyr
# Xephyr -query this_machine_ipĀ :2
Passwordless login
In order to enable passwordless login for XDM, add the line below to /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources
:
xlogin*allowNullPasswd: true