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#1 2019-01-31 09:55:14

lugge
Member
Registered: 2017-03-17
Posts: 33

Display Manager with grub-like behaviour

Ok, on my Arch machine I set up different xsessions, for example: Plasma, i3, Plasma with i3 instead of kwin and even a session for directly running a VirtualBox VM.
I can choose from these sessions in SDDM (and I have to type in my password).

Now, for most of the time I will just use my main-session which is "plasma with i3".
So I could just config SDDM to autologin into this session.
However, every time I want to use a different session, my workflow would look like:
- start PC
- Arch boots "directly" into Plasma
- log out from Plasma
- choose other session in SDDM

Of course this worklfow is not good because it would cause me to wait till Plasma is loaded and then log out immediately.

I desire something like grub:
- Default session is marked
- default session is loaded after sort time, maybe 3 seconds
- if key is pressed during this time, one can select another session with arrow keys
- bonus points for not having to type my password

Is this possible with SDDM?
If not, is there a Display Manager (can also be CLI) with this behaviour?
Did I describe my problem appropriate? :-)


Note: I know of the "startx with parameter" solution.
This would be my last resort because I don't want to type "startx $sessionname" every time i log in.
At the moment, I have no xinit installed.

Last edited by lugge (2019-01-31 09:57:46)

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#2 2019-01-31 12:15:23

Wild Penguin
Member
Registered: 2015-03-19
Posts: 319

Re: Display Manager with grub-like behaviour

Lightdm?

$ cat /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf | grep -i autologin
# pam-autologin-service = PAM service to use for autologin
# autologin-guest = True to log in as guest by default
# autologin-user = User to log in with by default (overrides autologin-guest)
# autologin-user-timeout = Number of seconds to wait before loading default user
# autologin-session = Session to load for automatic login (overrides user-session)
# autologin-in-background = True if autologin session should not be immediately activated
#pam-autologin-service=lightdm-autologin
#autologin-guest=false
#autologin-user=
#autologin-user-timeout=0
#autologin-in-background=false
#autologin-session=

Quite possible there are others, this came up by a google search :-)

EDIT: it seems at least gdm should be able to have a delay.

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2019-01-31 12:20:37)

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#3 2019-01-31 12:56:13

Trilby
Inspector Parrot
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,452
Website

Re: Display Manager with grub-like behaviour

For a cli version, just set up autologin to the tty as described in the wiki, and modify the start X at login to give options with something like the following in your shell profile:

if [ $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ] && [ -z $DISPLAY ]; then
	seconds=3
	session=plasma
	prompt_notice="Starting $session in $seconds secoonds, press any key for options..."
	prompt_select='Enter your preferred session: '
	read -n 1 -t $seconds -p "$prompt_notice" ignore && read -p "$prompt_select" session
	exec xinit $session
fi

Then set up your xinitrc with a case statement, or similar, to start the specified session.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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