[ale] Auto Login

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Tuesday 24 September 2002 09:32 pm, H. Bieber wrote:
> Can someone tell me how to setup a Linux box that auto logs in? We are
> creating a stand alone web browsing PC that wil be running RH 7.3, and
> Mozilla in Kiosk mode. We want a generic user with no rights to get auto
> logged in when the machine is booted. It would be even better if we
> could auto login and launch a program (mozilla).

Funny you should ask.  I had to do this a couple of weeks ago, so it is still 
fresh in my mind.  You could use gdm or kdm to do this, but you may not want 
the overhead.  Here is what I did.  I followed the instructions I found on 
the Linux Gazette:  http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue72/chung.html 

To automatically boot and start up X windows as user "monitor" compile this 
program named autologin: 

int main() {
   execlp( "login", "login", "-f", "monitor", 0);
}

 and put these lines in /etc/inittab: 
# start up X as the "monitor" user
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -n -l /usr/local/sbin/autologin 38400 tty1

 This logs in the monitor user. 

In the .bash_profile of the monitor user we have these lines:


if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ]; then
  startx
fi 
 so X starts automatically. .Xclients-default has whichever commands you want 
to run in X (xterms, window managers, etc).  Note that this was a very small 
Redhat install.  Other systems may use another file other than .Xclients for 
the X startup script.

Hope that helps,

--Michael

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