Hello everyone,

At our university we sometimes start up a "kiosk-environment" on all our student computers. This is achieved by logging in to a special account with a very restricted fvwm2 environment as its home.

Our current problem is that we physically need to login as the special user at each terminal. I.e. someone has to go from computer to computer and login to the account via an xdm (kdm in our case).

Does any one know how to remotely start up X and login as a specified user?

I've searched the documentation for kdm but have only seen some info on how to login to a remote kdm and get the session on your own box.

(Please note, that the question is not the more common one: how to start up an application on your own computers X server from a remote host.)

Best regards,

Cricidy

This seems more like a hack than a real solution:

In KDE's Configuration Center you can set to automatticaly login a user. Find the file where this setting is stored and write a script that:
-sets the username in the file
-restarts X
-restore original settings

If you just need to login the same user every time it is sufficient to use the Config Center

I think Xnest can do that.

Yes, the kdm patch seems like a quick and easy solution. I think I'll do something like it.

I checked the documentation for Xnest. It seemed to me that Xnest is utility for starting an X server within another X server (thereof the 'nest'). Have you heard about someone using it to start an X server remotely as described in the first post?

Anyhow, thanks a lot for your advice!

Cheers,

Cracidy