Making XDM look good

[jurrie]

Yay, got it to work now, exactly the way I wanted it n_n (except the border around xclock.. any way to get rid of it?)

Waii (2560x1024, 568k png)

[placeholder]

Yay, got it to work now, exactly the way I wanted it n_n (except the border around xclock.. any way to get rid of it?)

Waii (2560x1024, 568k png)

Yeah, the '-bd <colour>' flag is how you set a border colour in xclock. It should work in other apps as well. Just use `appName --help` to see if it has it.

[jurrie]

doh o_O I only read the man page and it didn't mention the -bd

thanks XD

[hicksboson]

Is there anyway to include a sessions dropdown in xdm? I currently use KDM and use it to switch between desktop environments often.

I made a session-choser with xdialog, a gtk+1.x version of dialog. So you should first install this to use my script:

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emerge xdialog

Here is the script that displays the session chooser (with radio buttons)

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#!/bin/bash

## Set the File that stores the last Session
LastSession="/etc/X11/xdm/scripts/last_session" 

## Get the last Session if present, otherwise try to get default Session from /etc/rc.conf
[ -f $LastSession ] && source $LastSession
if [ -n "${XSESSION}" ]; then
        DialogSessions=" ${XSESSION} $(echo "Last_(${XSESSION})") on"
else
        [ -f /etc/rc.conf ] && source /etc/rc.conf
        if [ -n "${XSESSION}" ]; then
                DialogSessions=" ${XSESSION} $(echo "Last_(${XSESSION})") on"
        fi
fi

## Get all available Session from /etc/X11/Sessions
for file in $(ls /etc/X11/Sessions/)
do
        DialogSessions="${DialogSessions} $file $file off"
done

## The Dialog itself
ChosenSession=$(/usr/bin/Xdialog --stdout --no-tags --radiolist "Select a Session:" 0 0 0 \
        $(echo "${DialogSessions}"))


## Write chosen Session to File
if [ -n "${ChosenSession}" ]; then
        echo "XSESSION="${ChosenSession}"" > $LastSession
fi

You can put this for example in /etc/X11/xdm/scripst/session-chooser.
I load this script with a panel of three buttons for halt, reboot and the Session chooser (/etc/X11/xdm/scripts/buttons)

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#!/bin/sh

# xmessage returns the number of the button plus 100 (so 101 for the first 102 for second ...)
/usr/X11R6/bin/xmessage  -geometry +0-0 -buttons halt,reboot,Session "$@" "" ""
case "$?" in
        101)
                /sbin/halt
                ;;
        102)
                /sbin/reboot
                ;;
        103)
                /etc/X11/xdm/scripts/session_chooser
                exec "$0"
                ;;
esac

To show the buttons in lower left corner of the screen add the followin line to your /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0

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/etc/X11/xdm/scripts/buttons &

and the following at the Start of /etc/X11/chooser.sh (to get the chosen session startet)

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(...)
# If $XSESSION is "", source first /etc/conf.d/basic, and then /etc/rc.conf
if [ -z "${XSESSION}" ]
then
        [ -f /etc/conf.d/basic ] && source /etc/conf.d/basic
        [ -f /etc/rc.conf ] && source /etc/rc.conf

## This is the line you've got to add
        [ -f /etc/X11/xdm/scripts/last_session ] && source /etc/X11/xdm/scripts/

last_session
fi
(...)

You can change the appearance of the buttons in /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources with Xmessage*some_option for example to fit it whith Pwnz3r's theme add to Xresources

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! Buttons Configuration
Xmessage*message.scrollVertical:        auto
Xmessage*message.scrollHorizontal:      never

Xmessage*Command.highlightThickness:    2
Xmessage*Command.internalWidth:         8
Xmessage*Command.internalHeight:        8
Xmessage*Command.shapeStyle:            rectangle
Xmessage*Command.font:  -*-bitstream vera sans-bold-r-*--20-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1

And at last to get rid of buttons, when you enter a session Add the following line to your /etc/X11/xdm/GiveConsole

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/bin/killall xmessage

Ok, that was a lot of stuff, but it's realy nice and usefull and I hope it help to "downgrade" from gdm/kdm (for those who want):-)

Jojo

[VoVaN]

...my 2 cents
picture: http://vovan.homelinux.org/files/screenshots/xdm.png
config: http://vovan.homelinux.org/files/xdm/

Some tips:
-if you'd like to have you favorite mouse pointer instead black cross put this in your Xsetup_0

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/usr/X11R6/bin/xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr

-if you don't like the default gray background during X startup, modify you Xservers as bellow:

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:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X -nolisten tcp -br

(the important is -br, which changes background to black)

[placeholder]

VoVaN: You know, it was your post about this from 6 or so months ago that got me into the whole configuration of XDM. People did not like your design tastes as much though, so it kind of threw them off.

Also, I plan on making an alternative to the session chooser with Python using GTK2. I will get on that sometime when I get home.

[suineg]

Vovan, how did you get your directory listing to look like that, is that apache?

thanks for the config options...great stuff

[mikegpitt]

hicksboson,

Thanks for the scripts! I've had no time recently but I think I'll try them out soon.

[ares]

My shot
http://www.genbuild.org/gallery/view.php?gid=3&phid=0

[hicksboson]

To kill all those apps you startet with xdm (like xclock, xsetbg ...) at once you can add this line to your /etc/X11/xdm/GiveConsole

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/usr/X11R6/bin/xwininfo -root -children | /bin/grep '  0x' |  /bin/cut -d' ' -f6 | /usr/bin/xargs -n1 /usr/X11R6/bin/xkill -id

With this you don't have to kill each app seperatly, so you can comment out all this "killall /some/prog" lines in your GiveConsole.

This is nothing for you, if want to keep anything running after you logged in.

[luna80]

very good tips!!

i'm trying to change the font of the login box but any different font from -*-snap-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* work for me.

can somebody tell me why?

[LucaSpiller]

I like those scripts hicksboson but I have a couple of problems:

If I add -bg white it reveals a strange box thingy above the buttons, I want to make the whole button set really small but this ends up covering them. So is there a way to remove it?

Also is there a way to change the theme on your chooser script?

[Farkenell]

doesn't .bashrc run everytime you start a terminal?

so you'd have it run startx everytime you open up *term?

[ares]

New with xcompmgr
http://www.genbuild.org/gallery/view.php?gid=3&phid=1

[G3n2]

can anyone tell me how to change the font ?
there's like a strange line with *--snap etc. is there any docu on how i might see all the fonts i have and how to add them correctly ?

because i want the artwiz-anorexia font , but i have no idea how to add it

any help is appreciated , thx

-g3n2

[Oxyron]

G3n2, xfontsel can be used to generate font lines.

[G3n2]

G3n2, xfontsel can be used to generate font lines.

i found that out , but artwiz doesnt seem to be in the selection :S

it should be in the family box i guess , but it isnt ?

any ideas ?

i've emerged artwiz-fonts and artwiz-aleczapka-en

[ares]

xlsfonts '*artwiz*'

[G3n2]

xlsfonts '*artwiz*'

pattern artwiz unmatched

[ares]

@G3n2 : restart xfs and X ?

[G3n2]

did that

but still not working

any idea's ?

[G3n2]

re-emerged artwiz-fonts , restarted the whole box just for fun , did an rc-update add xfs default for the font server , started the font server , it DOES read artwiz dir , but xfontsel AND xfontselector dont show the fonts , im stuck here . any idea's ?

[luna80]

for me work only font that look like this:

-<series>-<font_name>-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

for example: -misc-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*


if you have problems with fonts try to put a font like the above example.

[djpharoah]

@G3n2
add the paths to the font u want to use in ur xorg.conf file
that way seems to automatically work for me

hope this helps

[psyqil]

can i get rid of the black borders around the term though?

This hasn't been answered yet, has it? I use

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*Foreground: black

to let these lines disappear, you probably would want them white...