Hi to everyone. I've used Slackware for a month now and I'm quite happy. Seeing dvd's and everything. I'd like to ask for some help in a couple of things.
First, as the subject of the thread says how can I make a button for closing the computer, without asking the root password. Should I suid the halt command? Can I then add it to the buttons in KDE's taskbar? What is the danger of suid-ing my halt?
Second, how do I change the login manager? Currently I think I have the X login manager with a nice flower. I'd like to use KDE's login manager as I can customize it more easily.
Thanks in advance.

I'm assuming you already changed your /etc/inittab to runlevel 4. Runlevel 4 should boot GDM, if not installed, then KDM, if neither installed, then XDM. If you didn't edit /etc/rc.d/rc.4 then I don't know why you have xdm. If you can post your /etc/rc.d/rc.4 then I can probably help.

As for the shutdown button, there is a lock/logout applet for the KDE panel. It brings up the logout menu, which should have a choice to shutdown.

1:
Make sure that the reboot/halt commands are in your path, either that or call them with their complete path (ie /sbin/halt). SUID shouldn't be a problem.

2:
If the file /etc/sysconfig/desktop exists, edit it.
If not, then try /etc/X11/default-display-manager.
Or, alternatively, check which display manager is called with your init scripts - check which one is linked, so for example you may have a symlink from /etc/rc4.d/S99xdm to /etc/init.d/xdm. If this is the case, just create a new link to your preferred login manager and unlink this one, so for example, you'd create a symlink ln -s /etc/init.d/gdm /etc/rc4.d/S99gdm and then [b]unlink /etc/rc4.d/S99xdm[/i].

HTH

Ok, nailed the KDM login, just moved up the lines for kdm in rc.4.
The problem with halt reboot remains. Even if I call them like:
/sbin/reboot, I get reboot: must be superuser.
That's why I'm thinking suid. Is this the way distros like SuSE and RedHat do it?
The button that logs out in KDE has only 2 options. Logout/Cancel.

Edit: woooo, strike out the last sentence. It seems that the 2 options presented was because I had gdm or xdm. Now that I have kdm shutdown and reboot just became an option

Consider using sudo instead or suid-ing
this would be a safer option