Controlling X sessions (WAS: Re: invalid partition table)

[Matthew Swift <swift@bu.edu>]

>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Hamilton <Matt_Hamilton@bangate.compaq.com> writes:

    Matt> hitting <ctrl>-<alt>-<backspace>.  After you do that, you
    Matt> need to disable xdm at bootup (obviously).  I'm not sure the
    Matt> official way to do this, but I'll put in here the way I did
    Matt> it (yes, I made the same mistake, so I'm a fool too).  In
    Matt> /etc/init.d there's a file called 'xdm'.  Toward the top
    Matt> there will be a line that says 'run_xdm=1'; well, change
    Matt> that to 'run_xdm=0' and that should take care of it.  You
    Matt> can change it back to 1 later when you get your
    Matt> configuration set up properly for your video.

This is a perfectly good way and it works. 

Another nice thing to know when fiddling with X is the following
resource specification which on Debian exists in /etc/X11/Xresources
(the systemwide resources file).

This means that C-r at the login window aborts X, and that F1 and
C-<RET> log you in with a 'failsafe' method in case you've screwed up
your .Xsession.  I think this starts twm and a single xterm, but this
too is configurable somewhere in /etc/X11.

xlogin*login.translations: #override\
	Ctrl<Key>R: abort-display()\n\
	<Key>F1: set-session-argument(failsafe) finish-field()\n\
	Ctrl<Key>Return: set-session-argument(failsafe) finish-field()\n\
	<Key>Return: set-session-argument() finish-field()