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I am running Debian(Knoppix) installed to drive and most everything works well. I enjoy Linux but am fairly new to it.
My question concerns starting an X window manager without logging first into a display manager. Currently the load process has KDM started in runlevel 2-5 . I mostly use Fluxbox and don't really need any of the others. I have done some studying on this and tried some of the man help in a smaller sized distro, it's fairly easy to grasp with only one window manager and no display manager . However, I don't really comprehend which script is taking priority or actually being run first during the initial runlevel 5 start up. I know KDM is getting it's signal somewhere at the end and initd is termed but I still don't know which part in which file to change. Basically, there are several .Xsession scripts in different locations and the only .xinitrc script is scripted towards one of them. When I run /etc/X11/Xsession in xterm, it loads KDE. Same with /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc because it's scripted towards /etc/X11/Xsession. In /etc/init.d there is another xsession, but it doesn't script KDE.
There are no Xsessions/xinitrc scripts in any directories besides /etc/.. that I've found.
Then there's the rc, inittab, and KDE/KDM scripts/configs. Essentially, my goal is for xinit_xinitrc_X to load Fluxbox directly and bypass KDE/KDM altogether, but I'm nervous about changing this before I understand. I bet there's a simple answer and I've probably already read it somewhere, just confused with the structure. If I knew which script or scripts to alter, I could write the various details myself. Please, what's the best way to reach this goal?
kdm is set as the default DM and run from /etc/X11/default-display-manager. That is the whole name of the config file by the way. It usually has one line and looks like this in knoppix/debian:
/usr/bin/kdm
If you don't want kdm to run, just comment out the line by putting a "#" in front:
#/usr/bin/kdm
You'll need to be root to edit the file. After doing so after you reboot you will come to a command line login instead of kdm.
I looked into that file earlier but decided to remove all the kdm entries with sysvedit_Ksysv. After reboot, at command line I couldn't start X successfully until I ran kdm. Startx would bring me into the X GUI for a second, then back to command line with several errors. X, the same and fluxbox too. I changed .xinitrc but I think that was the problem, the syntax is wrong?;
# /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
#
# global xinitrc file, used by all X sessions started by xinit (startx)
. /usr/bin/fluxbox
I think there are some enternal graphical errors aswell. Cmdline output an unknown Fluxbox error at some point.
Should #/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc be uncommented?
Fluxbox man pages discribe sometimes there be an '&' after the app name, or is it the
period before . /fluxbox? Many possiblities. Don't know but I'll keep at it, if it's figured out I'll post what worked.
What I gave you works because I've done it myself with knoppix, mostly due to the fact that kdm was hanging up for long periods of time. As you discovered, debian uses SysV startup scripts for each major DM instead of using runlevels as a code for whether or not to startup X. When you have nothing in default-display-manager, debian reverts to text mode which is what you want. You just get a message that kdm could not be started and is not the default DM. It looks like those SysV scripts are pretty screwed up now and X will not start.
True, that method does work.
Kdm is still working fine and I did actually get Startx to load fluxbox, but if I hadn't created a two gig swap part I'd be crashed right now. I mean, Top showed something like 2000 + processes, the bulk of them .xinitrc. I still don't know what went wrong, so I just reconfigured with sysV editor, kdm at runlevel 5. For some reason, X couldn't process .xinitrc with # /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc commented, but uncommented it was being backgrounded hundreds upon hundreds of times. Basically, startx fluxbox &
works, only if .xinitrc works thousands of times. More homework on this one for me.
Kilgoretrout, thanks for the advice it helped me see something obvious. Here's the best I could come up with. /etc/kde3/kdm/kdrc is the script I altered to achieve the original goal.
I removed all the other WM's and changed some of the X core booleans concerning login and that was it. Now Fluxbox loads three times as fast.
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