XBanner: Making XDM More Attractive

After working with X on Linux for a while, I realized I always start X, and I usually do it shortly after logging in. Therefore, I decided to run XDM, which gives me a login box already in X. XDM installed and ran out-of-the-box with no problems, no hassle.

After just a few days, I found I hated the way it looked. XDM's default is a dull, boring gray screen with a simple text box and nothing else. Compared with some commercial versions of Unix, it was definitely lacking. Since I wanted Linux to look cool, too, I decided to write XBanner.

XBanner was written primarily for Linux, but it is not Linux-specific. It can be compiled and run in any environment supporting X11 release 4 and up. I have tested XBanner on Linux, Ultrix, Digital Unix, Solaris, SGI IRIX, AIX and even VMS.

I have had a report that XBanner does not work with X Inside's Accelerated X server. I tried to contact X Inside about this issue, twice. I have been completely ignored—pity.

The XBanner home page, sponsored by the Physics department of California State University, Fullerton can be found at:

http://physics.fullerton.edu/XBanner/

And the FTP locations are:

ftp://physics.fullerton.edu/pub/Linux/XBanner/<\n> ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/xutils/ftp://vvtp.tn.tudelft.nl/pub/XBanner/

I expect new mirrors will become available by publication time. At the time of writing, the latest version is in XBanner1.3.tar.gz.

Most Linux distributions (Debian, Slackware, et al.) include a package that sets up XDM and its configuration files. In case your distribution doesn't include XDM, it can be found at sunsite.unc.edu, the “home” of Linux software on the Internet—ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/xutils/xdm.tar.gz.

Compilation and installation is easy. XDM comes with an Imakefile. If your system has X11 installed properly, type xmkmf -a in the directory of the XDM source, then type make. If you have problems, consult the FAQs. Setting up the X11 environment and using imake are beyond the scope of this article.

After the installation is complete, create a directory /usr/lib/X11/xdm/ and copy the files from the config/ directory in the XDM source tree into it. Note that /usr/lib/X11/ should be synonymous to /usr/X11R6/lib/ on Linux.

XDM reads the file /usr/lib/X11/xdm/xdm-config (see Listing 1 for the default contents), and extracts from it the location of the rest of the configuration files. Nearly all XDM configuration files are defined in xdm-config.

Listing 1. xdm-config Notice the files with the _0 suffix refer to :0--the local display. XDM runs Xsetup_0 to initialize the display, then pops up its login box and asks the user for a username and password. When the user has finished typing this information, XDM checks the password database. If the user is authenticated, XDM runs a few things including the Xsession script that sets up the user's environment and loads the window-manager.

These two files, Xsession and Xsetup_0 are the files to which lines are added in order to run XBanner and Freetemp. This is discussed more completely later in this article.

After downloading the XBanner source archive, unpack it using:

gzip -dc XBanner1.3.tar.gz | tar xvf-

Change directories to XBanner1.3/ and enter make. On Linux systems, this should proceed with no problems at all. After compilation is done you will have four executables:

Typing make install will install the executables to the directory /usr/local/bin/X11/ (not including the random_effect utility), and set proper permissions. You can change the destination directory by editing the Makefile.

If your system does not have the XPM library, the compiler might complain that it cannot find libXpm.a or -lXpm. In this case, edit the Makefile; it contains instructions on disabling XPM support.

Now, to set up a good default resources file, go to the XBanner1.3/ directory and issue the command:

cp samples/XBanner.ad \
/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XBanner