XDM

[Dargor]

Ive been playing with XDM and having not found much documentation i thought i would write some to make it easier for everyone else.

What is it? XDM is a display manager for X, its lightweight not tied to any particular desktop / window manager.

There are many ways to setup your xdm config with the xdm-config file containing addresses to other config files used by xdm. Some people change the addresses and leave the originals untouched but for this howto im going to leave xdm-config and edit the originals. I suggest you backup those originals though.

Changing the wallpaper.
XDM doesnt really support wallpapers but we can run commands when XDM boots and we can run a command to change the X wallpaper, so it can be done. When searching for this i found a lot of howto's that used programs that dont seem to exist anymore or at lest arnt in the etch repo, but finaly i found xsetbg.

To run commands when XDM starts edit the /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup file.
a line containing.

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xsetbg `wallpaper url`

edit `wallpaper url` as appropriate.

Then if want to move the login box around.
go to /etc/X11/xdm/Xresouces

you need a line like this, i dont think its in the debian default Xresources.

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xlogin*geometry 300x80+30+658

thats in pixels (length)x(height)+(x-axis)+(y-axis)

You can edit most of the colors and other things in the Xresouces file. i just commented them out because i wanted black, but it looks like there hex color codes. If someone finds a full list of things that can go in here i would be very greatful.

For extra fun you can run things like conky in the Xsetup. Note they will be running as root so you might want to change that with something like

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su -c (command) (user)

and things like conky will need to be run in the background, like..

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conky &

If you want to get a screenshot of your XDM to share (please do) you will want a line like this in your Xsetup. Note it will be run everytime XDM is run so you probably want to edit it out again once you have your screenshot.

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`sleep 3 && scrot (url)` &

substitute url as appropriate.

Heres my xdm,

If anyone has any other tips please add.