i'm having a bit of a problem setting window maker as my default session in xdm ( or even gdm)

i built window maker from source on my mandrake 8.1 box, and have fallen fowl of the myriad of scripts on the mandrake box (compared to my friends debian box).

gdm goes into gnome by default, ( i think i am going to remove gnome and gdm because i never use gnome anymore) and xdm launches twm.

if i do startx then window maker lauches :-)

-- my ~/.xinitrc is as follows:

-------------------
PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/bin"

# If you login from xdm, uncomment this to make error messages appear
# in the console window.
#
# tail -f /home/jordan/.xsession-errors > /dev/console &

exec wmaker
--------------------

to be honest ive never really looked into all the X init scripts before so im a bit lost.

ive done a man xdm but with no luck.

any help much appreciated.

I had a similar problem with my setup. For some reason or another the login manager never looked at my .xinitrc so modifying that didn't do anything. I did some digging and found that I had to add an entry to my Xsession file.

/etc/X11/xdm/Xsession

scroll down till you find an area that looks similar to this:

1)
if [ -x /usr/share/apps/switchdesk/Xclients.$1 ]; then
exec -l $SHELL -c "/usr/share/apps/switchdesk/Xclients.$1";
fi;

**there are a few more lines here**

gnome)
exec -l $SHELL -c "gnome-session"
;;

I think you need to add a line like the one above for Window Maker. Doing the following should work just fine.

windowmaker)
exec /usr/share/windowmaker
;;

I did this when I was using KDE with kdm login manager. I added a few lines for blackbox and everything works great now. Hope this helps.

use "switchdesk" command.
like "switchdesk GNOME" or "switchdesk KDE"

thanks for the replies, unfortuntaly good old mandrake seems to be set up a bit different to redhat:

switchdesk isnt available.

/etc/X11/xdm/Xsession just calls /etc/X11/Xsession. i have tried adding the line:

exec wmaker

or

if [ -x /usr/local/bin/wmaker ];then
exec $SSH_AGENT /usr/local/bin/wmaker

but it still just starts twm.

anyone any ideas?
i suppose it isnt vital seeing as startx is working fine, but i'd like to at least understand what is going on for peace of mind.


thanks.

(Heres a great example of someone using mandrake and therefore not knowing how something in particular is set up...i think im gonna switch to debian soon anyway.....)

Hi
There are two ways; hacking scripts, or use the (running) gdm itself
First the easy way in gdm choose
(have to guess correct tabnames as i use mine in dutch )
system -> configure (give in root passwd) then choose Expert
go to tab login sessions and add a session
mine for windowmaker; #! /bin/sh
exec /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession WindowMaker
Guess you can use wmaker inst. WindowMaker
For script hacking look in /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf and
check /etc/X11/gdm/ Sessions and so on
use slocate gdm and see what needs to be changed as i only
used gdm itself to add sessions

again thanks for the help but adding a session to gdm doesnt work ( presumably because i built wmaker from source rather than using the mandrake rpm. )

what is the path to your wmaker script ?
from startx your wmaker fires up allright ?
maybe use the complete path

yep with startx wmaker fires up great.

i dont think ive got a wmaker script, the binary in /usr/local/bin/wmaker

i think the problem might have been that /usr/local/bin wasn't being found in my PATH, even tho it is added in both roots and my own ~/.bashrc file.

strange. once i added PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/bin" to my /etc/X11/Xsession script everything worked. ( this was after re-writing the whole Xsession script.......oh well)

anyone know why this is?

switchdesk works when it is installed and also the switchdesk rpm of the desktop environment
KDE-switchdesk-2.0

just because you built from source doesn't mean adding to the */gdm/Sessions shouldn't work. ive done it with black/flux/open box no probs.