Use your screensaver as your login screen background

ecatmur · Last edited by ecatmur on Thu Mar 11, 2004 9:45 am; edited 3 times in total

There's lots of beautiful screensavers in Portage, the best perhaps being skyrocket and the rss-glx collection.
But what's the point of having all this eyecandy if you hardly ever get to see it? Wouldn't it be better to have it waiting for you when you come to log in via GDM? Well, now you can!
Screenshot (afraid that's not a very good one - it's a bit hit-and-miss as PrintScreen doesn't work in gdm, so I had to set xwd on a timer then Ctrl-Alt-F7 back to the login screen)

OK, first thing is to set up gdm (I use 2.5.90.1, but it looks like 2.4.1.7 should work). As root, launch gdmsetup and set local login to standard greeter with no background. Then open xscreensaver-demo, find your favourite screensaver, hit Settings, Advanced, and note down the command line. Convert the program to a full path - if it isn't in your path, it's probably in /usr/lib/xscreensaver.
Then, edit /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf, find the BackgroundProgram line and set it to something like:

snakattak3 · Guru Joined: 11 Dec 2002 Posts: 468 Location: Seattle

Thats really cool, gonna have to try that when I get home tonight. You think it would work with KDM as well?
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RedDawn · Posted: Sun Feb 29, 2004 4:35 am Post subject: Does it?

Does this work with kde....

I Like it but not enought to use the Gnome gdm crap thingi..

i dont like Gnome...

So does this work on KDM..

(kde 3.2 )

sigix · Apprentice Joined: 25 Jul 2003 Posts: 192

aah nice!
worked with gnome, not tried with kdm

deadaim · Guru Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 467 Location: Florida

Does this work with xdm?

drakos7 · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 4:57 pm Post subject:

Nice work. Now I am greeted with the BSOD: Blue Screen of the Day. :wink:

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christsong84 · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 5:54 pm Post subject:

Bastux · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 6:05 pm Post subject:

I'm very impressed!

Very very very good idea!

mahir · l33t Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Posts: 725 Location: London

i dont have a gfd.conf
i have a gdm.conf

and there is no background line?

what do i do?
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ecatmur · Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 11:23 am Post subject:

Thanks for pointing that out; corrected.
Not sure about the missing line: you could try putting it in or if that doesn't work you may need to upgrade gdm.

NitroPye · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 3:07 pm Post subject:

I think it should also be "-root" instead of "--root". I don't know though, because I cannot get it to work. I created the file /etc/devfs.d/nvidia.conf and added to it [code]/dev/nvidia* root:video 600[code] and I get an error on boot.
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TimG · n00b Joined: 03 Jun 2003 Posts: 62 Location: Houston, TX

agmoe · n00b Joined: 01 Apr 2003 Posts: 8 Location: Sweden

Great tip!

It works excellent and looks very nice, thanks!
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ecatmur · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 9:48 am Post subject:

Souperman · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 10:54 am Post subject:

NitroPye · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 11:33 am Post subject:

Nah, I should have checked devfs.conf instead of just going... "OH my god its broke run away run away!!" ... in a search for the holy grail style.

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jkcunningham · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2004 6:20 pm Post subject:

Has anyone gotten this to work with xdm?

-jeff

Souperman · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2004 7:21 pm Post subject:

pathose · Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2004 2:32 am Post subject:

Those of you who've gotten this working, can you answer me this question? Once you've logged in, the xscreensaver continue to run in the background or is that process terminated? I know that when you log into gnome, xscreensaver is started, but it's launched as your user's process, whereas if it's acting as the background for gdm, it would (presumably) be run as gdm's process. I ask because I would be interested in having a glx screensaver (from x11-misc/rss-glx) as my background, but I won't want it constantly running and hogging resources for nothing (while i'm not looking at the login screen).

ecatmur · Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2004 4:53 am Post subject:

The background program process is terminated on login, with SIGTERM.
This means that you must ensure that any children of the background program have the SIGTERM signal propagated to them - this can be a problem when using a script as the background program.
However for xscreensaver hacks it will work fine.
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timaios · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2004 Posts: 14

MighMoS · Guru Joined: 24 Apr 2003 Posts: 416 Location: @ ~

Is there someway to put this into a theme file?
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ecatmur · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 4:06 am Post subject:

Alterations to a config file? I doubt it, sorry.
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peterton · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Aug 2003 Posts: 110

Shouldn't editing /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 and adding a line /usr/lib/xscreensaver/xmatrix -root & be enough to get it working in xdm? Haven't tried it as I've got too many windows open and don't want to log out.
[edit]works

[/edit]

dmitrio · Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2004 3:15 pm Post subject: :. copied to gentoo-wiki.com

I have copied this, with permission of ecatmur, to gentoo-wiki.com
http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Screensaver_in_Background
If you see anything that should be added or changed, feel free to do so.

Thank you for a great HOWTO.
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