Display Manager published on Dec 5, 2009, tagged with arch, linux, bash

GDM, KDM, SLiM; they all serve one purpose. Accept a username/password and start X. The below accomplishes the same in the cleanest, simplest, most transparent way I know.

Simply put, if you’re logging into the first tty and X isn’t already running, start it.

Drop this at the bottom of whatever user’s ~/.<shell>rc where you want it to apply:

if [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]] && [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]]; then
  exec startx
fi

Make sure you to do put it at the bottom; I made the mistake of not realizing any settings after the startx won’t be applied in the X environment that’s started (duh).

One added benefit here is that if X dies for any reason, you aren’t left logged in on tty1 like you might be using some other display managers. This is since the builtin exec replaces the current process with the one specified.

For a slightly more featureful bash-based login mechanism, be sure to check out CDM.

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