Comments on: How to auto login and startx without a display manager in Debian

By: chetan

chetan — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:47:57 +0000

x:23:once:/sbin/rungetty -u root -g root tty9 -- /bin/su creddy -l -c “xinit > /tmp/xinit.out 2>&1″

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:16:21 +0000

@captain obvious

You could install screen then alter your .bashrc to look like this:

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

By: captain obvious

captain obvious — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:05:38 +0000

You can get owned by an attacker pressing ctrl+c on tty1…

By: alex

alex — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:40:41 +0000

oh my god
guys, you rule!!
thanks!!

By: undead_rattler

undead_rattler — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:52:45 +0000

@Tim You appear to have a conflicting X manager installed. Check for XDM, GDM, or KDM in your /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, or /usr/sbin directories. Use “apt-get --remove PACKAGE-NAME-HERE” to remove them.

@Dan You’re not getting any keyboard input because the way you’ve edited the file looks like it’s sending Standard in (kbd/mouse) and Standard out (display for bash/fish/sh/etc) to null. try taking out the “2>&1″ at the end.

@eev this is a (hidden) file stored in your home directory (/home/USERNAME/) that you might have to create yourself. A simple google search should do you well

By: eev

eev — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:48:35 +0000

where the hell the .bash_profile is?

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:08:29 +0000

Hi, My keyboard input won’t work when I modify my inittab with “1:2345:respawn:/bin/login -f YOUR_USER_NAME tty1 /dev/tty1 2>&1″, what could i be doing wrong? I’m not starting X, all I want is autologin leaving me in a terminal.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:03:18 +0000

Sorry, but neither of these methods work on my Debian machine. I wish I could elaborate on why, but I am not familiar enough with these lower level workings. Could be that I am still using Etch.

For method 1: It booted normally and prompted me to login at the graphical interface as usual. I logged in on the account chosen for the example and several of the gnome panel applets crashed.

For method 2: It booted normally and prompted me to login at the graphical interface as usual. I logged in on the account chosen for the example and the GUI hung and I had to undo the changes in the console.

By: tawan

tawan — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:12:49 +0000

Great, I had a hunch you could do this and so happy you can. Method 1 worked perfectly, thank you.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:13:00 +0000

Method 2:
while; true
do

You forgot about `;` after “while”.