Yeah, when making a machine for a less technical or less
command-prompt
comfortable person, I like to have it boot into GUI via the desktop
manager. But when setting it up for myself or for people technically
sharp enough to log in and then type "startx" (and people you can
trust with the command prompt), I like to boot to the command
prompt.
When logging in at the Linux console (on current kernels at least),
then running startx, there is a security problem:
Anyone with physical access to your computer could:
a) logout of your gui session (if it's not screensaver locked),
taking
them back to your command line, and depending on your settings of
/etc/sudoers tty_tickets or respectively !tty_tickets setting - see
man sudoers) might give them instant root access;
either way, mischief may ensure.
b) type Ctrl-Alt-F1 (for example), followed by Ctrl-C to kill your
gui
session, notwithstanding if you even have it gui locked
SO: what to do?
What I did for a while was:
a) log in to Linux console
b) startx; exit
This way, when the gui (X in this case) exits for any reason, then
the
console shell session logs out automatically.
That's fine, but requires more typing, and remembering to add the
extra "; exit" command.
So to optimize, simply put the sequency "startx; exit" (or similar)
into a shell function - I use the name "se" since it's less to type
:)
So now I use:
a) log in to Linux console
b) se
Happy and safe sessions to all,
Zenaan