PROTOR Knowledge Base

PROTOR Redhat : Selection of X Display Manager

Author:	Don Davies
Date:	21-Apr-2002

As mentioned in a previous note the selection of Display Manager to be used for a system is controlled by the file /etc/sysconfig/desktop . Specification of the "Desktop" item wihin this file determines the Display Manager to invoke. The choice of Display Manager is specified within the file

Edit this file to control the Display Manager to start. Use

         Desktop = "KDE"               to start KDM

         Desktop = "GNOME"             to explicitly start GDM

         Desktop = AnotherLevel        to start XDM

The selection and startup of an appropriate display manager is controlled by the script /etc/X11/prefdm which is referenced from /etc/inittab. On later versions of Redhat, references to AnotherLevel and hence the startup of XDM have been removed.

The PROTOR distribution kit contains a version of prefdm which conains references to AnotherLevel and hence can be used to invoke the XDM display manager preferred by PROTOR. Overwrite the file /etc/X11/prefdm with the version from the distribution. Alternatively manually edit the script so that it looks like the following :

       if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/desktop ]; then
           source /etc/sysconfig/desktop >/dev/null 2>&1
           [ -n "$DISPLAYMANAGER" ] && DESKTOP=$DISPLAYMANAGER
           if [ "$DESKTOP" = GNOME ]; then
                  preferred=gdm
           elif [ "$DESKTOP"="KDE" -o "$DESKTOP"="KDE1" -o "$DESKTOP"="KDE2" ];
           then
                preferred=/usr/bin/kdm
           elif [ "$DESKTOP" = AnotherLevel ] ; then
                preferred=/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm
           fi
       fi

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