Old person on Linux....?

[Chavo]

You don't have to change the default runlevel, just add xdm/kdm/gdm to the list of daemons in rc.conf

At least, that is true for Arch, I could be wrong for Slackware

[iago]

Well, changing the runlevel is the proper way of doing it.  Yeah, I can load xdm or whatever on startup, but that's more of a kludge. 

[Chavo]

Why is it more proper?

When I learn how to do things in linux, its usually from Arch's wiki or from googleing an error message, maybe you could enlightenme on the 'proper' way to do things (and why of course!)

[rabbit]

Because you're editing the config so that it loads in the way X wants it to be loaded, instead of running it as a root-level daemon!

[iago]

Why is it more proper?

When I learn how to do things in linux, its usually from Arch's wiki or from googleing an error message, maybe you could enlightenme on the 'proper' way to do things (and why of course!)

Well, there are certain ways that are intended to do things.  I only know Slackware's conventions well, so I can't say anything about Arch.  But the best way to do it is the way that's built into the OS. 

[Newby]

You don't have to change the default runlevel, just add xdm/kdm/gdm to the list of daemons in rc.conf

At least, that is true for Arch, I could be wrong for Slackware

Apparently Arch doesn't go by standards (it would seem to me anyway) according to this:

SysVinit (which will be referred to as “init” from now on) works using a run-levels scheme. There are seven (numbered 0 to 6) run-levels (actually, there are more run-levels, but they are for special cases and are generally not used. See init(8) for more details), and each one of those corresponds to the actions the computer is supposed to perform when it starts up. The default run-level is 3. Here are the descriptions of the different run-levels as they are implemented:

0: halt the computer
1: single-user mode
2: multi-user mode without networking
3: multi-user mode with networking
4: reserved for customization, otherwise does the same as 3
5: same as 4, it is usually used for GUI login (like X's  xdm or KDE's  kdm)
6: reboot the computer

The command used to change run-levels is init [runlevel], where [runlevel] is the target run-level. For example, to reboot the computer, a user could issue the init 6 command, which is an alias for the reboot command. Likewise, init 0 is an alias for the halt command.

So, as you can tell, you should probably change the runlevel to 5, which would occur after going into 3 iirc. This is how the runtime scripts are supposed to work, anyway. Why start it as a daemon?

EDIT -- I'm currently building a LFS system so I happened to have read that. :P

[iago]

Incidentally, Slackware and BSD use a SysV-style startup, but I don't think all Linuxes (Linuces?) do

[Chavo]

You don't have to change the default runlevel, just add xdm/kdm/gdm to the list of daemons in rc.conf

At least, that is true for Arch, I could be wrong for Slackware

Apparently Arch doesn't go by standards (it would seem to me anyway) according to this:

SysVinit (which will be referred to as “init” from now on) works using a run-levels scheme. There are seven (numbered 0 to 6) run-levels (actually, there are more run-levels, but they are for special cases and are generally not used. See init( for more details), and each one of those corresponds to the actions the computer is supposed to perform when it starts up. The default run-level is 3. Here are the descriptions of the different run-levels as they are implemented:

0: halt the computer
1: single-user mode
2: multi-user mode without networking
3: multi-user mode with networking
4: reserved for customization, otherwise does the same as 3
5: same as 4, it is usually used for GUI login (like X's  xdm or KDE's  kdm)
6: reboot the computer

The command used to change run-levels is init [runlevel], where [runlevel] is the target run-level. For example, to reboot the computer, a user could issue the init 6 command, which is an alias for the reboot command. Likewise, init 0 is an alias for the halt command.

So, as you can tell, you should probably change the runlevel to 5, which would occur after going into 3 iirc. This is how the runtime scripts are supposed to work, anyway. Why start it as a daemon?

EDIT -- I'm currently building a LFS system so I happened to have read that.

What scripts might not be running?  Arch doesn't have seperate rc.d script directories for different runtime levels.

How are they not going by standards if 4 & 5 are reseved for customization?  Seems to me that means they can do what they want with those 2 runtime levels and still be within the standards scheme.

@iago: Arch branched from Slack, so I imagine many of the basics of Slack are the same for Arch

[Newby]

Uhh, it is not a seperate directory. It's simply a file in /etc/rc.d iirc.