Hi all...

I want to tell you my situation so i don't get a bunch of replies saying not to do this because of security issues..i don't really give a f$#@ about security issues...and i use root all the time i only use the other user for testing purposes.
OK, i have a red hat 9 system that i setup NTOP(a internet traffic sniffying program) on. This computer is going to be in a corner along with another monitoring computer. this computer is not going to have a keyboard mouse or monitor on it..so i need it to be able to boot up to gnome as root or another superuser with all root privileges and start the NTOP program. The program says i MUST be logged in as root and i have to be loading it from a terminal WHILE IN gnome or kde. It needs to be like this so if something goes down i can just hit the reset button and 3 minutes later the computer will have logged on and NTOP will be running.
i really need to do this..and like i said i don't care about security or anything else..as i run the computer in root all the time because the programs i use MUST be run i root. if anyone can and wants to help please post.
THANK YOU
Jason

kdm, the KDE graphical login managers, allows auto logins, but I don't know if lets this be done for root.

It's pretty stupid...
you should create an account for yourself and another one for testing if you want to.
That's very very insecure!

I know it is stupid but i need to run in root....the program does not run in any user other that root..so i have to have root login or an user that looks has all attributes of root but lets you login automatically

that's really nuts. aren't there other progs that can do what ntop does?

here's something I would never do but: how about starting it using /etc/rc.d/rc.local? Rather you'd start kde using rc.local and then Autostart in kde to start ntop.

are you sure ntop needs a full blown DE running? that seems a mighty waste on a computer with no monitor...

Well if you don't want to run as root, figure out want your app needs, then make a user that can do this stuff.

quatsch..ok you said to start kde with ../rc.local how do i go about doing this? in inittab or what

No.

I really don't like explainig this since it's a really bad idea. But here are general things. When your computer starts up, it executes a series of scripts that are usually in your /etc/rc.d directory (it depends on your distro; you can see in your /etc/inittab where the scrpits are). The last script that gets executed is rc.local. If you want to have something start up automatically at boot up, what you can do is edit rc.local to do it for you.

now i need to know how i can get into kde withou logging in ans be under root

root executes the startup scripts so if you manage to start kde with the scripts, kde will be running as root and so you'll be logged in as root.

Set it to runlevel 5, with KDM as the default login manager. Then configure kdm to do auto-logins.

kdm wont do an automatic root login though

forget kdm. if you know how to start X and kde from text mode, you'll know what to do with the rc.local script. If not, you'd better do some reading before you hose your system and worse.