h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Have just managed to get LRs-Linux installed on my laptop...

Have most things working (less sound - which is just a case of figuring out ALSA and not too much of a priority right now - and accelerated video which I have given up on until 2.6 comes out)

The ost irritating thing so far is that I can't get any graphical login programs working.

inittab shows my default run-level is 2, and I'm sure I'm supposed to start xdm/kdm/gdm off in there somehow - just can't figure out how to do this...

I know this is silly, but my keyboard (which works fine under X) is also giving me random messages as I type - doesn't affect anything, just looks terrible and would likely freak my wife out should she ever actually try to use my laptop!!

Any help would be appreciated...

2 is a strange runlevel to be at.

3 is typically assigned as the ordinary console login, and that uses the standard keyboard mapping. when you move up to 5, it uses the X windows keyboard mapping, which is why the keyboard seems ok under X.

change the inittab entry to 5, and it should use a graphical login (if any of them are set up).

in the meantime, you can test your X system by typing "startx" or "xinit", and if those work, you can check out which graphic login you want by passing the name of the program as a parameter to xinit.

it sounds like the keyboard problem is due to not setting up the regionalisation for your keyboard. this is usually done in the same program you use to set your time zone (ie london, germany, usa, etc).

I can't help on that, as most distributions use their own tools to do it, and I don't currently have a copy of LRS linux.

LRs-Linux is a source based distro along the lines of LFS (Linux from Scratch)...

As far as I can tell it has no built in config tool, have tried to install linuxconf and a couple of others to no avail....

Looking in inittab, there is no graphical login at any level (can't find any references in rc.d or similar directories)...

Think it will end up being a case of install a different distro to see how that sorts things out and then reinstall LRs... Great - ony takes around 3 days if I choose KDE as well as the defaults...

As for the keyboard - had to change the nationality as a priority after install as I presume LRs was written by a German (keyboard set to a german qwertz configuration - just glad I didn't use y in that original root password!). Have been installing the development tree kernel to sort out a recognised problem with Toshiba Portege 4000 keyboards in XFree86 - unfortunately for me this has caused it's own set of problems at the CLI... I tend to use xterm more than anything now anyway - not to worry....

Thanks for your help...

there is a parameter (I think it is inittab::2 in your file), which needs changing to 5. this tells it to use a gui session.

the actual login will be via some program like kdm or gdm, which are the kde or gnome dialog managers respectively. there is also a standard X dialog manager as well, but I don't happen to recall the name at the moment.

as regards LR-s Linux, I am on the development list, I just don't happen to have the machine with the cd burner working at the moment, so I have not downloaded the latest copy of the iso image.

the list is lrs support en, see http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/lrs-linux-support-en

Have spent much of the weekend trying to sort this out - and have almost got a solution...

Setting default init level to 5 alone didn't seem to solve the problem however entering a line something like this:

x:5:respawn:/usr/kde/share/bin/kdm

(I'm sure that's not 100% what I entered, but the essene of it is in there)helped to a certain degree...

Essentially taken from one of the LDP HOWTOs... Modified because I don't have /etc/sysconfig/desktop file...

When entering runlevel 5 this runs kdm fine... When trying to login as a normal user however I get an error message along the lines of:

entry not located in /etc/shells

(again - I know that's not right but laptop is at home - will write down full file lines and error messages if requested)

Have scanned throught all available documentation and cannot figure out what to do - have an inkling the solution is buried somewhere in the xdm configuration...

Thanks for the link - will try them soon (work firewall!!!)

well, they should definately be able to help.

especially as this seems to be down to script debugging problems.