Forceing suse 9.1 to use icewm over KDE

I am just rebuilding our LTSP server, (which had a hard disc fail). The last time I editied one of the config files to force execution of icewm, regardless of what the student clicked in kdm, but I cant remember what I did! Is there a) a cleaner way of doing this? something that didn`t require hacking of scripts is much easier to document. b) what am I likely to have editied? I thought it was //etc/X11/xdm/Xsession, but that didn`t "look" right. Thanks Rob Keeling

On Friday 10 June 2005 10:37, Rob Keeling wrote:
Is there a) a cleaner way of doing this? something that didn`t require hacking of scripts is much easier to document. In Yast sysconfig editor, edit Desktop->Window Manager->DEFAULT_WM
Cheers -- Phil Driscoll

Phil Driscoll wrote:
On Friday 10 June 2005 10:37, Rob Keeling wrote:
Is there a) a cleaner way of doing this? something that didn`t require hacking of scripts is much easier to document.
In Yast sysconfig editor, edit Desktop->Window Manager->DEFAULT_WM
Cheers
Hmm, Tried that, doen`t seem to make the change, as Thomas suggests, I think Yast only sets the "default" rather than forcing all users to use icewm. I am not sure if I can edit KDM or whatever to force this? Any suggestions welcomed! Rob Keeling

--- Rob Keeling <rob@rjkeeling.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
I am not sure if I can edit KDM or whatever to force this?
Well, I haven't used KDM since KDE 1.x days, but I believe now (with kDE 3.x) that other window managers are picked up by way of .desktop files. Recent KDE versions usually come with a lot of these defined for you. You can probably find a list of them here: /usr/share/apps/kdm/sessions Looking at the KDE spec briefly, if you don't find one for icewm, then you can probably create a new file that looks something like this: [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Type=XSession Exec=icewm-session Name=icewm Then it should just appear in the session list for you to choose. Now of course, it might be that you'd rather have it defined on a per-user basis, or you'd rather KDM launched icewm each time as the default. I'm no expert on KDE, but I believe that the file "default.desktop" in the same location as the above .desktop files, and using the same format mentioned above, is the one that's used by, well, default. :) custom.destop, however, acts differently. That should invoke a user's ~/.xsession file. (It'll actually source /etc/X11/Xsession first, but that checks to see if a user has a ~/.xsession or ~/.xserverrc file and that'll get run before the main script does.) If you've read the reference to the StartX hantsLUG article in my last email, then you should have something like this: -------------------------------------- #!/bin/sh #~/.xsession #ENSURE this is "chmod +x ~/.xsession" exec icewm-session --------------------------------------- Having that for each user, is trivial.
Any suggestions welcomed!
HTH, -- Thomas Adam. ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

--- Rob Keeling <rob@rjkeeling.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
Is there a) a cleaner way of doing this? something that didn`t require hacking of scripts is much easier to document.
Well, you can use YAST, if you're using SuSE. That just sets and exports (at init) the WINDOWMANAGER environment variable. This is great if you want a provide a default for those users that do not define their own X11 startup file.
b) what am I likely to have editied? I thought it was //etc/X11/xdm/Xsession, but that didn`t "look" right.
Well, it is certainly one file that plays its part in starting X11. I did document this, which you can read about [1]. What's generally done is that users define either a ~/.xinitrc file, or a ~/.xsession file. Again, that's explained here [2]. -- Thomas Adam [1] http://linuxgazette.net/105/tag/2.html [2] http://www.hants.lug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?LinuxHints/StartX ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com
participants (3)
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Phil Driscoll
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Rob Keeling
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Thomas Adam