Re: xdm login behaviour

[John Summerfield <summer OS2 ami com au>]

On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Bruce Richardson wrote:

> I discovered a problem that will affect anyone using AfterStep with xdm on 
> a RH 5.1 installation.  I typically use startx but I've been experimenting 
> with xdm and found that it was causing me problems no matter how I played 
> with .xsession etc to make the config files the same as for startx.  I 
> tracked down the problem to the way xdm is logging in.  When I run startx, 
> it uses the environment created by bash when I logged in.  This includes 
> adding /usr/X11R6/bin to the path (in /etc/profile) and ~/bin to the path 
> (in /etc/bashrc).  xdm, of course, is doing its own login and (crucially) 
> doesn't add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path, which causes all kinds of problems 
> and is a major oversight.
> 
> I don't know if this is true of other RH versions.  I'll do a bit more 
> searching to try and find the best solution to this, then let you know.

the xfm login script is very naughty and uses bash in ways the authors
didn't intend and were supprised about when I complained that it didn't
work with bash 2.

I've fiddled with my xdm login (and profile) scripts to produce correct
paths when invoked from xdm, from normal login and when started in an
xterm window.

I have to say, I don't remember just what I did. I've recently upgraded to
3.3.3 and nothing broke though...



-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.