making a minimalist window manager start up with a particular user logs on

JackSmith · 05-19-2005, 09:10 PM

I'm setting up one user on my linux box to be for gaming. My brothers who don't know linux are going to be gaming using the machine.
I'm running Slackware 10.1, and I have the machine boot to console.
so I was wondering how I could set it up so that when a particular user logs on, xwindows starts with a minimalist window manager (twm maybe?), and so that Point2Play is automatically executed.
also, how do you give mount privilages to an account?

Ynot Irucrem · 05-21-2005, 12:45 PM

I'm still kind of noobish, and I think I may have pulled some or all the following out of my uh.. buttocks (that sounds so stupid, are there REALLY 13 year olds on this forum?). also I have never used slackware (although i am planning to use arch which is apparently a cross between gentoo and slackware). one more thing that will banish whatever credibility this post has - this is all untested, even on my distro. anyway:

assuming the default shell is bash, you could add "startx" to the end of your new user's ~/.bashrc file.
then, in their ~/.xinitrc, add whatever it says in the man page for twm - probably something like "exec twm" or "exec twm-start".
you could probably run point2play in one of these files too, just make sure if you put it in the ~/.xinitrc file, it is before the line with "exec", and it doesn't have "exec" in front of it.

I have no idea about mount privilages, but you could just add the "user" parameter to the entries for the devices you want them to be able to access, so that all users can mount that device, but only the person who mounts it can umount it.

Croaker · 05-22-2005, 10:53 AM

It should work something like this:

Code:

bash# adduser

Fill in appropriate information
Then copy the xinit file to the newuser home directory

Code:

bash# cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinit.twm /home/newuser/.xinitrc

Then

Code:

bash# cd /home/newuser/

Then open .xinitrc with your favorite text editor. I use mc so I'll use that as my example

Code:

bash# mcedit .xinitrc

I don't have twm so I'll use blackbox as the example.
Just substiture twm for blackbox
At the bottom you will see this:

Code:

# Start the window manager:
exec /usr/local/bin/blackbox

And add a line like this here
I'm using firefox for my example. Use the full path name for the program you want to start and make sure you put the ampersand in so the program will return control to twm.

Code:

# Start the window manager:
exec /usr/bin/firefox &
exec /usr/local/bin/blackbox

Save it. Then log in as the newuser to make sure everything works.
That will start the program you want when they type 'startx'.

To give mount privilages to a user just do (as root):

Code:

chgrp users /mnt/cdrom

And that should take care of everything.