xdm updates and Debian

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 03:52:37PM -0400, William O'Higgins wrote:
> I like starting X on my own.  I don't need, or want, xdm or any of its
> fuzzy-headed brethren mediating my login experience.  So I run
> "update-rc.d -f xdm remove" and all is well.  Until I run an update
> (well, a dist-upgrade actually) on a core X component, and then I get
> graphical logins again until I Ctrl-Alt-Backspace three times to get
> back to a good clean console, and re-run my rc.d update script.
> 
> I'd love to know why Debian believes that a) I want them to auto-f***
> with my settings or b) that if I don't want xdm, then I don't want X.
> Does anyone have a suggestion to make this tiny, annoying detail go
> away?  Thanks.

The file /etc/X11/default-display-manager contains the name of which
display manager you want.  Setting it to 'true' or something else that
is not gdm/kdm/xdm will make none of them start.

of course the official debian policy on it is, don't install it if you
don't want it, although the package is supposed to leave your links
alone as far as I know, although I must admit they never seem to stay
put when I change them either.  I guess using update-rc.d correctly is
tricky.  Perhaps deleting the links is the wrong thing to do, while
changing start to stop in each run level may be the right way to do it.

If course if you never intend to start xxdm manually, just uninstall it.

Lennart Sorensen
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