[vox-tech] starting xwindows

[Nick Schmalenberger]

On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 09:22:51PM -0700, Gandalf Parker wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2007, Rick Moen wrote:
> 
> >Quoting Gandalf Parker (gandalf at any1can.net):
> >
> >>OK that seemed to get the same result. An xwindow session, but no gnome
> >>menus. Just the debian splash screen and a mouse cursor.
> >
> >Um, I'd really very strongly suspect that you're missing some key
> >packages.  Maybe you're missing the intended window manager, for
> >example (metacity, or whatever the frell they use, these days)?  I mean,
> >/usb/bin/gnome-session doesn't do a lot of good if key parts of your
> >intended GNOME stuff just ain't there.
> 
> It worked when the server was setup. It was installed and it worked. But I 
> cut the routine that made me boot directly into gnome. So unless I 
> uninstalled something Im pretty sure that its all still there.
> 
> I could try and remember years ago when I made that change and undo it. 
> But I dont want to boot into gnome. I prefer my servers without gui 
> overload (if I did then Id might as well use windows).
>
In my experience the neatest way to stop a Debian machine from starting
X on boot is to remove the package of the display manager. Otherwise,
you could do "update-rc.d -f xdm remove" or whatever your display
manager is. That is what would happen if you remove the package, except
it is still there and you could still do "/etc/init.d/xdm start" if you
felt like it.

When you do startx or log in through the display manager, it should try
to start your window manager, and (I think, correct me if I am wrong) if
you don't have one it gives you a fixed size xterm, which you can really
do a decent amount with. I seem to remember having problems a few times
getting icewm to start when I start X and I think adding it to .xinitrc
was one way to get it to work. The correct debian might have something
to do with /etc/alternatives. You could also try purging everything X
related then reinstalling xbase-clients which will depend on all the
rest and you might get twm or something too. 
Hope this helps,
Nick Schmalenberger