*GUIDE* Debian Auto Login & StartX

[Helpme1986]

My first guide so be gentle!

Can imagine alot of people wanting to auto login and/or startx (I originally looked into this to launch Liam's XBMC automatically, instead of startx just use xbmc) so did a guide, might stop a few questions on the forums (or if it doesnt its something easy to link to)

http://elinux.org/RPi_Debian_Auto_Login

[naicheben]

Thank you. German translation here

[asb]

A nicer way to do it is to modify /home/pi/.bash_profile with e.g.:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]; then startxfi Then you can log in to your other ttys fine.

[Helpme1986]

asb said:


A nicer way to do it is to modify /home/pi/.bash_profile with e.g.:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]; then startxfi Then you can log in to your other ttys fine.

I originally tried this but .bash_profile didnt exist (using nano it created a new file)

[naicheben]

asb said:


A nicer way to do it is to modify /home/pi/.bash_profile with e.g.:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]; then startxfi Then you can log in to your other ttys fine.


Is this known to work on the RPi?

[asb]

Helpme1986: yep, just create the file.

naicheben: Yes, I've used it a lot on the Pi

[frying_fish]

Helpme1986 said:


asb said:


A nicer way to do it is to modify /home/pi/.bash_profile with e.g.:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]; then startxfi Then you can log in to your other ttys fine.

I originally tried this but .bash_profile didnt exist (using nano it created a new file)


No harm with adding a new bash_profile if it doesn't exist. It doesn't have to exist, but if it is there then when starting a bash shell it will check through it and see if any settings need to be set through it.

I assume this has worked fine for everyone so far?

[Chris.Rowland]

That's really nice, thank you.

Can I make a suggestion, could you add a few lines of explanation to say what you are doing. It would help people to understand what's going on.

I guess that you are editing the inittab file and replacing the getty command with a login command of some sort. Are the angle brackets some sort of redirection? I guess that -f pi is specifying the user, it now doesn't seem to need a password.

The second change seems to be to add the startx command to the end of the profile file so that LXDE is run automatically.

[poing]

Googling 'LXDE' and looking at the images a thought struck me. On Windows if the desktop background is a bitmap it will use more RAM then when it's just a solid color. If that's the same with LXDE it would probably be better to use a solid color (and set it in this script) considering the limited amount of RAM on the Pi.

[drbob]

Awesome - pulled my hair out for awhile on this topic -- seems there is much conflicting information that spins a person in circles. This worked...

Now, a small additional question:

Want to run the command

x11vnc -forever -display :0

after startx is executed. Thought I'd be slick and try to pop it in after the startx command, but that doesn't fly... advice?

[FixedCoil]

@dfbob

Try ending startx with & e.g. 'startx &', this will launch startx in the background and return the shell command prompt to accept the next command.

HTH