Re: xdmcp and gdm -- missing something ?
J.F.Gratton wrote:
Don,
Thank you so much, this is exactly what I looked for. I am stuck in the
same position as you are, trying to automate the procedure. A temporary
hack for now is to add the line you mentionned (X :1 vt8 etc etc) into
my /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh. This is ugly, but hey.. it works :)
Hmm... have to give that a try. Thanks! I could get GDM to start in
either "mode" individually, but not both. It seem like it "should", but
if I had both server lines defined in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf the computer
would go into a loop of some sort and eventually kick me out to the
command line with neither one started.
I tried to solve it somehow, it didn't work (got a flickering screen for
all my endeavours).. Here's what I added to /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf; I've
commented the lines since for now it doesn't work. helsinki is the
hostname on that computer. That reminds me... in your example, -indirect
legolas .... legolas was the local host, right ?
No, not usually. Let me explain that a bit... Here are the computer
names and their functions on my LAN:
legolas ---> gateway, IPMasq,
bilbo ---> time server, mail server, workstation (old DEC Alpha)
gandalf ---> main workstation, LAN print-server (my machine)
gimli ---> secondary workstation (son's machine)
elrond ---> secondary workstation (wife's machine)
All machines are using gdm and are setup to honor "indirect" xdmcp
request as per the [xdmcp] section of /etc/gdm/gdm.conf. I can actually
use any one of them, including the "localhost" in the "-indirect
[hostname]" part of the line and get it to work.
#[server-Chooser]
#name=Chooser
#command=/usr/bin/X11/X -indirect helsinki
#flexible=true
[servers]
0=Standard vt7
#1=Chooser vt8
I wonder if our "problem" isn't caused by looking at the local machine
for a "chooser" when it is still trying to start X for vt7??. Maybe the
"chooser" function isn't working at the time we are trying to start
vt8. I wonder if setting the "-indirect..." line to an external machine
that already has X running and offering "chooser" services would work??
BTW, I found that understanding how it is done in XDM, then applying
that knowledge to GDM was quite helpful to me. There are several
different places in XDM that have to be modified to get xdmcp working,
but you can do it all in /etc/gdm/gdm.conf when using GDM. The KDM
setup is almost identical to the XDM setup... or used to be. I have not
looked at KDM in quite a while. Here is a good HOWTO on setting up XDM
in a college LAB setting that I found helpful:
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue27/kaszeta.html
The XDMCP HOWTO at the Linux Documentation Project was quite useful too,
but you had to do some mental conversions to adapt it to Debian. The
above link was mainly about XDMCP on Debian, although on an older
version of X that had the files located in different places.
Guess I have some thinking and experimenting to do.... <grin>
Cheers,
-Don Spoon-
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