xdm.options(s) xdm.options(s) NAME xdm.options - configuration options for X display manager DESCRIPTION /etc/X11/xdm/xdm.options contains a set of flags that determine some of the behavior of the X display manager xdm(m). /etc/X11/xdm/xdm.options may contain comments, which begin with a hash mark and end at the next newline, just like comments in shell scripts. The rest of the file consists of options which are expressed as words separated by hyphens, with only one option per line. If an option is present with the "no-" prefix, or absent, it is disabled, otherwise it is considered enabled. Available options are: ignore-nologin Normally, the contents of the /etc/nologin file will be displayed using xmessage(e) (if xmessage is available), and the user will be returned to the xdm login screen after the xmessage is dismissed. If this option is enabled, xdm starts a session as usual (after the xmessage is dismissed, if xmessage is available). restart-on-upgrade Enable this option with caution on "production" machines; it causes the xdm daemon to be stopped and restarted on upgrade, even if the process has children (which means it is managing X sessions). Typically when a package that contains a daemon is being installed or upgraded, its maintainer scripts stop a running daemon process before installing the new binary, and restart it after the new binary is installed. Stopping xdm causes immediate termina- tion of any sessions it manages; in some situations this could be an unwelcome surprise (for instance, for remote xdm users who had no idea the adminis- trator was performing system maintenance). On the other hand, for machines that stay up for long periods of time, leaving the old daemon running can be a bad idea if the new version has, for instance, a fix for a security vulnerability (overwriting xdm's executable on the file system has no effect on the copy of xdm in memory). The xdm pre-removal script checks to see if the xdm process has any children; if it does, it is possible that someone's session would be killed by stopping xdm, so a warn- ing is issued and an opportunity to abort the upgrade of xdm is provided. If this option is dis- abled (the Debian default), xdm will be not be stopped or started during an install or upgrade; the administrator will have to do so by hand (with "/etc/init.d/xdm restart", or by rebooting the sys- tem) before the newly installed xdm binary is used. use-sessreg If this option is enabled (the Debian default), the sessreg program will be invoked to register X ses- sions managed by xdm in the utmp and wtmp files. Otherwise, it is not, and the utmp and wtmp files will have no record of xdm sessions. Users of older versions of the Debian system should note that the "run-xconsole" option has been removed. The con- figurable shell scripts /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup and /etc/X11/xdm/Xreset may be edited to disable or modify the running of xconsole on the xdm greeter screen. SEE ALSO sessreg(g), xmessage(e), xdm(m) AUTHOR This manpage was written by Branden Robinson for Debian GNU/Linux. Debian GNU/Linux 10 Nov 2000 xdm.options(s)