Help File Library: Booting Into GUI
This is a mini-Help File that will show you how to have your Linux
system boot into X right away, without you having to go
through the command line login and then typing startx.
Because this question is asked ever so often in the forums
and chat lines, perhaps this will answer the questions once
and for all. Then again maybe not...
ASSUMTPIONS
There are a couple of things I want to assume about you,
the user. Here is a list of them. Please be sure you've
met all the requirements before continuing. This will make
life much easier for the both of us:
- You have X running properly on your system.
- You know how to use a text editor.
There, not too bad right? Check the appropriate HOW-TOs
or Help Files for additional reference on the above if you do
not meet the requirements.
XDM
xdm is a program that manages logins to the system
via a graphical user interface (GUI). It does the exact
same thing as when you login or telnet to a UNIX machine.
You get asked for a login name, and then a password. It
authenticates them both, and if they match, then you get
into the system. The only difference is, xdm uses
windows, and buttons instead of the traditional command
line login interface. What are the benefits of having xdm
boot up instead of the traditional command line interface?
Well for one thing, it looks much more user friendly. For
another, you get into X right away as soon as you log in.
ALTERNATIVES TO XDM
If you have actually seen xdm before you will have
to agree that it is not very pretty. In fact to me, the
command line login interface is much better. So are there
alternatives? Yes there are. There are in fact two programs
that offer a much better looking GUI login interface. They
are gdm and kdm. Is there a price to pay?
Well, both programs are free of charge. The catch is that
they need to work with GNOME and KDE. That means you have
to install one or the other to get them working. Installing
either GNOME or KDE is beyond the scope of this Help File, so
it will not be discussed. However, if you already have either
GNOME or KDE installed, feel free to use GNOME's gdm
or KDE's kdm in place of xdm. The only real
difference is that gdm and kdm offer more
features and look better.
RUNLEVELS
A runlevel is a number that tells Linux how to boot. This
number can be found in your /etc/inittab file. Linux
has in total 6 different runlevels. They are:
Number Action
-------- ----------
0 Shutdown
1 Single
User
2 Multiuser
3 Full
Multiuser
4 X11?
5 X11?
6 Reboot
You may be wondering why runlevels 4 and 5 have a qustion
mark beside them. The reason is that, depending upon your
distribution, one of these could be the X runlevel. If you
are using Slackware, then X is on runlevel 4 and runlevel
5 is unused. If you are using RedHat, then X is on runlevel
5 and runevel 4 is unused. If you are not sure what runlevel
X should be using, a listing of what runlevel does what
can be found in your /etc/inittab file. Just open
it up on your text editor and scoll down. You should come
across a chart similar to the one above.
Once you have the runlevel for X, you just need to make
one modification to the /etc/inittab file. Look for
the following line:
id:n:initdefault:
n is a number from 0 to 6. It will most likely
be 3, and never 0 or 6. It is from here that Linux will
check which runlevel to boot into. That means if you were
to change n to 6, then the moment you booted into
Linux, it would reboot, because runlevel 6 is reboot. Get
it? So change n to the X runlevel. So if my X runlevel
was 4, then this is what I would have:
id:4:initdefault:
Save the file when you have made the modifications.
TESTING THE GRAPHICAL LOGIN
>From here on, there is one of two things you can do. You
can either reboot your system, and after Linux does all
the usual checking, it will boot into X. The second thing
you can do is to use the telinit command. This command
takes one argument, and that is the runlevel for X. So once
again, if my runlevel for X is 4, the command I run is:
telinit 4
Be sure you have saved all your work because this command
will log you off and bring you to the GUI login screen.
The difference here is that telinit will change your
runlevel and not actually reboot the system. This is a very
cool program. If you decide you do not want to use the X
login interface, then you can return to the console by using
the command telinit 3. Remember that runlevel 3 is
multiuser. In fact, you could have just used the command
telinit 4 to get the X login interface without having
to modify any files at all. Why then did we not just run
telinit in the first place to get into the X login
interface? Well firstly, using telinit does not make
any permanent changes. If you were at runlevel 3 and you
switched to 4 via telinit, then the changes would
disappear when you rebooted. Secondly, explaining how to
modify the /etc/inittab helped to increase the length
of this Help File, plus you learnt something about runlevels.
CONCLUSION
That pretty much covers it. If you were planning on using
gdm or kdm instead of xdm you may have
noticed that I left this section out. The reason is that
the solution varies from distribution to distribution. If
I can find the generic solution I will update this Help File.
In the meantime, enjoy your new looking Linux system.
X_console shellscope@yahoo.com
