This is probably a silly quesiton, but I've been googling for about 20 minutes and haven't found anything. Weird.

I want to know 2 things. First, how do you add a window manager to the mdkdm window manager selection?

Second: I've just re-installed Mandrake 10.0 official (first time I managed to mess up the file system). When reboot is selected at mdkdm (the choices are "halt" and "reboot"), I get a blank menu. What file do I have to edit to add Linux and Windows back to this menu? And what should be in it?

Thanks, I know this is silly, but I just can't seem to find anything.

stunter

Edit: OK, gdm wasn't installed. The files for gdm must have been installed by the afterstep installation. I installed gdm and can get to afterstep now. It's interesting anyway.

Still can manage to get mdkkdm to display a reboot list, but that's no big deal.

Thanks for the help. At least I can play a bit now.

stunter

Can someone tell my where the mdkkdm conf file is located? I had thought, for some reason, that it was in /etc. but if it's there, I don't see it.

Thanks,

stunter

From MUO (MandrakeUser.org) - X - Starting X

So the answer to your question is that it's not a file, but a directory. Hope this helps.

motub,

Thanks, that helps a lot. As I said, it was a dumb question. Should have thought of it...but I didn't.

Thanks again,

stunter

No, it wasn't a dumb question at all... figuring out which "Sessions" directory is the one you need to be working with (I've got 3, I think, in various areas of /etc), much less what to do once you've found it, is really not something one would be expected to know right off the bat.

So it's a useful reference for me as well-- decent docs often clear up what can sometimes be quite a muddy issue.

motub,

Well, in looking at it, I think I have to come up with a script file for a new windowmanager then addit to the wmsession.d directory. Still not sure where the config for mdkkdm is exactly. It must be getting configuration from somewhere.

I also haven't found the reboot menu option yet. I remember in 9.2 that all the options from GRuB are listedm, but when I installed 10.0, the reboot menu from mdkkdm is blank.

Hmmm...

stunter

I think that mdkdm, like gdm and xdm get their configuration (or at least part of it) from xdm if installed (and it's almost always installed).

This is why I have 3 or 4 Sessions directories in different places; in addition to the xdm config folder, both GDM and KDM have their own (GDM's is in /etc/X11, but KDM's is in the KDE filetree somewhere), and then there's some general one called /etc/X11/dm which I don't even know what that one's about.

In any case, what I do if a new WM has not added itself to the menu is to open up one of the shell scripts in /etc/X11/Sessions (which afaik is the xdm folder, unless it's /etc/X11/dm/Sessions, and the higher-level folder is bogus)-- but not the GNOME or KDE ones, one for something simpler like XFce, blackbox, or whatever-- and change the exec and any other relevant settings (like the tooltip) to reflect the new DE I want to add, then save as the_new_DE_name. But I use GDM, so it might be slightly different for you (I never used mdkdm for more than one login so I really don't know what it might do differently from the other DMs).

But in general, that's how it's done.... you might want to do a "which DE_name" first, to see if there's already a shell script or something that you should be using in your DM session script.

I know it's not very clear, but like I said, this is a muddy issue. Hope it helps.

motub,

Cool. I'll mess with it a bit. It if works, it works. I use Windomaker and I wanted to try Afterstep, but running the rpm (or building from source for that matter) doesn't add it to the menus for mdkkdm or to gdm either, so I'm just rying to figure out how to add it manually.

We'll see.

stunter

Well, I tried about everything I can think of. I created a script to start Afterstep in the /etc/X11/wmsession.d directory. pretty much copying the existing scripts. Didn't work. I've looked at about everything I can think of. There's supposed to be a way to add window managers to KDM. Thought that might work since mdkkdm gets it's configuration from KDM, but couldn't figure out how to do that. Under Mandrake's control center (desktop managers), GDM isn't an option. It's KDM, MdkDM and XDM. I looked through about 50 scripts that are in any way associated with XDM, but couldn't find anything other than fall back stuff if other's fail.

Does anyone know how to add window managers to either KDM or MdkDM?

Thanks,

stunter

KDM... Run KDE and go to the KDE Control Center=>System Administration=>Login Manager. Under KDE 3.1.x there is supposed to be a tab that lets you add sessions (I have KDE 3.2.2 and do not have this tab).

The KDM folder is in /path/to/KDE/share/config/kdm/sessons. I think Mandrake installs KDE in the /opt folder.

GDM may need to be installed separately. It is usually installed with GNOME, but is a separate package from GNOME, so I don't believe you need to install GNOME to install GDM. To configure it, you type gdmsetup as root in a terminal (it's also in the main menu, under System Tools, I think, if you are still using the Mandrake menus and not the KDE/GNOME default menus).

Setting up GDM seems to set it as your default DM.

Is there an mdkdm folder in the /etc/tree? The config file should be there, which would tell you what folders mdkdm is looking in to find the sessions. It may be that mdkdm does not look in wmsession.d, but everything looks in /etc/X11/Sessions.

The config file in the kdm folder will also have a line like this one (this is mine from /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf):

SessionDesktopDir=/etc/X11/sessions/:/etc/X11/dm/Sessions/:/usr/share/xsessions/

This tells you where the dm is going to look for sessions, and as you see, /etc/X11/wmsession.d is not listed, but /etc/X11/sessions is. So I think you're adding the session to the wrong folder.

Hope this helps.

motab,

Hmmm. Well, Afterstep appears in /usr/share/xsessions, though it's the only thing in the folder. Afterstep also appears in the file /usr/X11R6/bin/RunWM. There is no /etc/X11/sessions/, /etc/X11/dm at all. There's a /etc/X11/gdm folder, but no gdm or gdmsetup program that I can find. How weird is that?

I think that mdkkdm runs it's setup from the kde setup, but I'll be darned if I can figure out where that is. It's isn't anywhere that you'd normally look for it.

>>KDM... Run KDE and go to the KDE Control Center=>System Administration=>Login Manager. Under KDE 3.1.x there is supposed to be a tab that lets you add sessions (I have KDE 3.2.2 and do not have this tab)<<

I have 3.2.2 installed and I also don't have a tab for this.

>>The KDM folder is in /path/to/KDE/share/config/kdm/sessons. I think Mandrake installs KDE in the /opt folder<<

Nope, the /opt forder is empty right now (except for some stuff I put in there)

Obviously, KDE is somewhere and it's config files are scattered around. I'll keep looking for it.

Any or all of locate kde |less, locate kdm, which kdm ought to give you a general ballpark path to work with. My files are in /usr/share/kde/3.2/ .

motub,

Well, I found it, but it doesn't do me much good. The config files are in /usr/share/kdm/sessions. But they are binary files: (eg, kde.desktop). Hmmm... well, there must be some way to create an afterstep.desktop.

Oh well, I can get to it by using gdm, so that's cool.

stunter

Maybe an update-menus -v does the trick. Someway like that, I added fluxbox to the menu in 9.2.

Cheers,
matze

They are in fact not "real" binaries, in some sense... I know you can't open them with right-click=>Open With, but you can open them in a text editor.

Open a text editor (as root) and open one of the files. You can do this, I do it all the time to edit the files in GDM, which uses the same system (maybe it's part of the freedesktop.org standardization).

Edit it to reflect a different WM and save as "new_wm.desktop" instead of "old_wm.desktop". When you next run KDM (meaning a reboot, since logging out does not restart kdm, only X), you should have both wm's appearing.