display manager tactics

[Federico David Sacerdoti <fds offm62 wuh wustl edu>]

Hi,

I have seen alot of calls for help on how to start gnome/WM, and how to
get session management to work correctly. So I thought I would share how I
have mine setup.

As an overview, I let gdm start gnome-session, and I let gnome-session
start enlightenment. For me its all automatic, and I leave all config
files as pristine as possible.

Here how its done: /etc/inittab is set to start in runlevel 5 and the last
line is:

x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/gdm

In the /etc/gdm/Sessions file, a symlink 
(made with ln -s <file> <linkname>) is made from Gnome to Default. The
/etc/gdm/Sessions file looks like this:
total 3
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root            5 Mar 12 13:21 Default -> Gnome*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root          321 Mar  7 11:02 Gnome*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         1332 Mar  7 11:02 Xsession*

This causes gdm to start the Gnome* script on login. That script in turn
calls either the command in $HOME/.gnomerc or if thats not there, the
script gnomerc* in /etc/gdm. My /etc/gdm/gnomerc has one line in it: 

/usr/bin/gnome-session

That command starts the enlighenment window manager and a gnome session.

This configuration imposes several contraints on the user the most
important of which is outlined below.

-the enlightenment window manager must be used.


I start all my gnome-sessions with the above configuration, and have had
great success with it. Please take into account that small changes in
config files and file locations will have a great effect on the operation
of the system. The configuration presented here works for me with a clean
install of GNome 1.0.1 on my pentium class RH 5.2 machines.

I hope this is helpful.

-FDS