Brian T. Schellenberger wrote:
> kdm is a login manager.
>
> I'm not sure what you think a login manager is, though.
Well, I thought of the getty daemons, or mgetty. From what I vaguely
recall reading (my background isn't sys admin, but instead development, so
I haven't dealt with the admin side of systems, except very little), mgetty
is a login manager kind of "utility".
> kdm is not needed to manage logins, but that's the only thing it does.
Let's see. Just checked ps aux and this shows gpm for the mouse, but
doesn't show either kdm or gdm, which is probably why I don't get a gui
login; just the plain vanilla character based prompt, which is fine, but
will look into kdm and gdm to see about adding a fancier u.i. for logging
in.
My priorities, though, aren't in this respect, but instead getting my
system upgraded and then on to postresql server and programming, ftp,
tcp/ip and Perl programming, etcetera. Hence, although I read about this
other stuff months back, it's not an explicit part of the agenda.
Is the gui login much better than the plain character one?
> It provides a graphical front-end that allows people to log in with
> graphics on their screen rather than logging in in text mode.
I'll look into this. Shouldn't take long to configure.
> It is the KDE folk's version of xdm. This has nothing to do with gpm,
> but I believe that gdm is the corresponding gnome login manager.
>
Got ya meaning. I read some documentation last night about this and
probably did get gpm and gdm confused, but knew kdm was related to kde.
However, another way it's of no real consequence to me is because I simply
follow installation guidelines and haven't had any problems using these for
the critical aspects of the system, so far; although, have only had RH 5.1
installation manual, but the instructions worked fine. The guidelines
aren't thorough, as I've learned, but for installation, they were adequate.
For kde, I followed their instructions, and these also worked the first
time. Same for gnome.
I haven't used mailing lists to figure out how to install software, before,
but have a feeling I'll be doing so, at least in the near future.
Adding new software and rpm dependency problems, though, are another story,
but I'll dig for documentation, first, probably, or maybe (old habits are
sometimes difficult to break). Besides, this gives the opportunity to
learn what documentation is available.
Mailing lists appear to be good for getting help, and learning about topics
in advance.
mike
