gentoo go good

[Steven Elling]

On Tuesday 29 April 2003 21:30, Eric Rossiter wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> As a normal user, I can't start gdm or kdm, tells me only root wants to
> do that.  I tried the fix suggested in the gentoo forums to no avail.
> Any other ideas?
>
> Will I not be able to type "startx" or is there a hack that's necessary?

I guessing you are logging onto the console and then trying to run kdm or 
gdm to bring up X in the KDE or GNOME windowing environments.

First off I'll clarify something.  kdm and gdm are display managers just 
like xdm and their purpose is to authenticate a user to the system. They 
are the graphical equivalent to getty, agetty, mgetty, etc. and are NOT the 
window managers.  Is it the responsability of the display manager to 
present a login to the user and once authenticated start up the window 
manager of choice, hence, the reason why it complains about root.

If you are going to use X mostly, then I suggest the following:

* Add the xdm rc script to the default runlevel so the display manager will 
start when the system boots.
* Edit /etc/rc.conf to define the display manager and the default window 
manager you want to use.
* Run '/etc/init.d/xdm start' to start the display manager.
* Proceed to login to the display manager to start your X session using your 
window manager of choice.

NOTE: kdm and gdm will allow you to choose which window manager to start.

If you are going to use X occasionally, then I suggest the following:

* Edit /etc/rc.conf to define the default window manager you want to use.
* Log onto the console with your user id.
* Run 'startx' to start your X session using your window manager of choice.

You should be able to run startx as a normal user without any problems.

> When X fires up, it's way huge, but a few ctrl + alt + + or - puts
> things where I want them.  How can I fix that, i.e. set a default
> resolution?  I haven't searched for this one at all, so if you want to
> point to a URL as opposed to spoon'n, I'm all eyes.

man XF86Config (Read the 'DISPLAY SUBSECTION' section of the manual paged).