On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 06:07 -0500, ken wrote:

Andre Truter wrote:

...

How can I get passwordless auto-login from GDM on SuSE?

I have set up Freevo on a SUSE box, but the idea is when the box boots up, it needs to boot directly into Freevo.

So far I have managed to get it to automatically log into user freevo, but it pops up a grey screen with a box that asks for the password. Once the password has been given, the login continue and Freevo is loaded without a window manager, is it should.

So, I just need to get rid of the box that asks for a password, as this is not very practical for a utility type setup like Freevo.

I know it must work, as friend is working on a kiosk system based on Ubuntu, also using GDM with auto-login, but on his system no password is asked.

I have compared my gdm config with his and did not not find any significant differences (background colours, themses, etc)

He also has a normal user account that he use, same as I do, so what can cause the password box to pop up?

Any ideas where I should look?

Thanks

I've tried to get that working too... without success. A couple years ago when I was trying out Mandrake 9.x, it was a simple matter of clicking a checkbox in a GUI. Doing that on Suse 9.3 Pro though does nothing.

There's /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager and it has a couple variables which seem to pertain to this functionality. I've played around with those,

Well there are ac couple of places that you could have looked. I suggest that you fire up YAST choose the Security and Users Tab, and select User Management. Look under Expert Options. Somewhere under there you will find the options to auto-login a user and to passwordless-login a user. If you happen to be using KDE as your gui, then try it's Control Center, System Administration, and look for Login Manager, and the Convenience tab, you'll need your root password to make changes. Mike

On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 14:08 +0200, Andre Truter wrote:

On 2/25/06, Mike McMullin wrote:

...

Well there are ac couple of places that you could have looked. I suggest that you fire up YAST choose the Security and Users Tab, and select User Management. Look under Expert Options. Somewhere under there you will find the options to auto-login a user and to passwordless-login a user.

I have looked in YaST under Users. There are no autologin settings anywhere at any of the tools available in the 'Security and Users' Tab.

I fired up my 9.1 server for this. YAST-->Security and Users-->Edit and create users. Expert Options drop down Menu. Login settings. My screen shows KDM login settings and allows for teh auto-login and passwordless login of a selected user.

I also grepped through all the files under /etc/sysconfig for autologin and found nothing.

The machine is running SUSE 9.3

If you happen to be using KDE as your gui,

...

then try it's Control Center, System Administration, and look for Login Manager, and the Convenience tab, you'll need your root password to make changes.

I can get it to work if I use a KDE environement, but I am not. This is a Freevo box, not KDE or TMW, or whatever. I don't even have KDE or GNOME installed, only gdm.

I cannot tell you what YAST might have for GDM on that screen.

I do not use a Window manager or Desktop environment. When the user logs in (and only one user) the X server is started. Once the X server is up, Freevo is started. The machine should not have a keyboard or mouse, it only has a remote control unit (Like a TV or VCR has)

The intention is to set up the machine as a utility. You boot the machine and after a while Freevo appears on your TV. The user should not even be aware that it is actaully a computer running Linux. To the user it should be a very nifty VCR/DVD Player/music player.

I have everything working, except that when X starts up, it asks for the password.

It seems that SUSE have some additional stuff or a custom gdm that asks for the password, because the Ubuntu version of gdm does not do that.

Or that at install time the default might be different. I know that you can set up SuSE to do an automatic passwordless login during the point where you set up the users.

I don't want to use KDM, as I don't want to install the KDE framwork also. Freevo already require a basic GNOME framwork (Not the full desktop, just a number of libraries and utilites). So, adding GDM is just one additional package.

Freevo has a nice way of doing it witout any login managers at all. They use mingetty with the --autologin option. This will login a user at runlevel 3 into a tty. Then you just set startx in the user's bashrc file and as soon as the user logs in, it starts X and then Freevo. This is nice a lean, but unfortunately SUSE's mingetty does not support the autologin option. (I think most modern distro's have disabled that due to security reasons)

Have you looked at /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager? Look towards the bottom of the files for DISPLAYMANAGER_AUTOLOGIN="" and DISPLAYMANAGER_PASSWORD_LESS_LOGIN="no" I think that what you need is for the top on to say "freevo" and the bottom one to say "yes"

On Saturday 25 February 2006 10:14, Andre Truter wrote:

Just to make sure I checked my displaymanager file and the settings that you list are not in mine. Those setings are KDM specific in 9.3 in any case. Or that is how it seems.

I ran 9.3 + gdm + Gnome as default for a long time and was able to configure many things (including the login manager IIRC) using the KDE Control Center: As user: "kcontrol -caption "%c" %i %m" (if it's not in your menu.) Then System Administration > Login Manager; you'll probably need to use the Administrative Mode button. Also, in YaST2's 'Edit and Create Users' module, I've just selected my normal account, clicked "Edit" and the first checkbox I see below my information is "Disable User Login". I'm pretty sure this directive will be respected regardless of your default display and window manager settings. YMMV, of course. hth & regards, Carl

On Saturday 25 February 2006 15:37, Andre Truter wrote:

Will this not prevent the user from logging in?

On a second read you may be right... I've always interpreted it to mean the login requirement is disabled... :-) I never run these things without a password requirement, so if I've got time this evening I'll check the manual or do some experimenting! regards, Carl