hey, I want the computer to turn on and autologin to console with a nonroot user . I've almost gotten it to work, here is what i have done:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

following www [dot] linuxgazette.com/issue72/chung.html (would have liked to make a hyperlink, but i need more posts ) very closely, I wrote the program autologin:

int main() {
execlp( "login", "login", "-f", "student", 0);
}

compiled it with gcc, and placed it in /usr/local/sbin. then ive modiffied the first line of inittab to look like this:

c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -n -l /usr/local/sbin/autologin 38400 tty1

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


problem is that it still prompts student for a password (it logs them in, but the password must still be manually entered)

ive thought up a couple of solutions, but i dont know how to go about doing them, these are:

a) make the user student passwordless (not sure if this is possible)

b) modify my autologin program to somehow enter the password?

NOTE im pretty sure that what is in inittab is solid, but the problem could very well lie there.

thanks for any ideas/help

As i understand u want the user to login with out entering passwd(passwdless). as below question:

a) make the user student passwordless (not sure if this is possible)

Here is the steps :

if you are in GUI (login as root user) to open a console and type :

press alt+f2 [run command]

type : konsole [to open konsole]

Now type:

[root@mail root]# passwd -d <username> [enter]

It will show you some thing like this:

[root@mail root]# passwd -d hitesh
Removing password for user hitesh.
passwd: Success
[root@mail root]#

Now press Ctrl + Alt + F3 [to go terminal]

Login with that user <username> [i.e. hitesh] and check it.

Hope this helps.

-Hitesh

Or if you want to do it with C, you have to learn a little about GNU/Linux PAM authentication API :

http://docs.linux.cz/pam/pam_appl.html
http://docs.linux.cz/pam/pam_appl-8.html << an application example in C