From a353c1a77ab9e2d6809653552bd1f38615378fc4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Luke Shumaker Date: Thu, 8 May 2014 15:06:53 -0400 Subject: add a work-in-progress article about how the Purdue CS boxes are set up --- public/purdue-cs-login.md | 48 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 48 insertions(+) create mode 100644 public/purdue-cs-login.md diff --git a/public/purdue-cs-login.md b/public/purdue-cs-login.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5bf186f --- /dev/null +++ b/public/purdue-cs-login.md @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +Customizing your login on Purdue CS computers (WIP) +============================================= +--- +date: "2014-04-21" +--- + +Most CS students at Purdue spend a lot of time on the lab boxes, but +don't know a lot about them. This document tries to fix that. + +The lab boxes all run Gentoo. + +## About GDM + +They run `gdm` (Gnome Display Manager) 2.20.11 for the login screen. +This is an old version, and has a couple behaviors that are slightly +different than new versions, but here are the important bits: + +System configuration: + + - `/usr/share/gdm/defaults.conf` (lower precidence) + - `/etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf` (higher precidence) + +User configuration: + + - `~/.dmrc` (more recent versions use `~/.desktop`, but Purdue boxes + aren't running more recent versions) + +## Purdue's GDM + +Now, `custom.conf` sets + + BaseXsession=/usr/local/share/xsessions/Xsession + SessionDesktopDir=/usr/local/share/xsessions/ + +This is important, because there are *multiple* locations that look +like these files; I take it that they were used at sometime in the +past. Don't get tricked into thinking that it looks at +`/etc/X11/gdm/Xsession` (which exists, and is where it would look by +default). + +Values for `~/.dmrc:Session` + - `custom`: Executes `~/.xsession` + - `default`: Executes ~/.Xrc.cs + - `fvwm2`: ??? + - `gnome`: ... + - `kde`: Displays a message saing KDE is no longer available + - `failsafe`: Runs a single xterm window (NOPE) + -- cgit v1.2.3