Hi all,
I have a startup script on my server which shows a menu and asks what the user wants, which could be anything from a console to an x session. I want to enable XDMCP though to enable network clients to connect, but this will only currently work while the server itself has started the gdm graphical session.

What I want to know is, Is it possible to run gdm as a background daemon in a startup script, so the server can be in console mode, or it can log in using XDMCP to itself. That will also allow the network clients to log in to XDMCP and create a unified interface.

Any ideas?

What I think you need to do is to configure gdm not to run automatically for display :0 (the console) - which will allow remote clients to log in using it, and allow it to be started on display :0 if necessary. I'm not sure how you do this - have a look at the X11 config files maybe (/etc/X11).

That sounds like the right way but I tried a little test and it didn't seem to work. I'll try again in a while just incase I did something wrong. There is a line in the gdm.conf like the following:

command=/usr/X11R6/bin/X -audit 0

After reading a vnc/gdm website they changed that to the vnc Xserver, which of course doesn't physically show any picture. So I looked at the help for X, which says the following:

use: X [:<display>] [option]

I changed the line to have a :0 in it, but that didn't make any difference. Now I realise I may have had the :0 in the wrong order so that's what I'll try.

Edit: the order doesn't seem to matter.