----- Original Message ----- From: "James Pearson" james-p@moving-picture.com

fred smith wrote:

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On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 05:36:19PM -1000, Miranda Hawarden-Ogata wrote:

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I have some clients that run centos6 and I need to have users be able to access the "failsafe terminal" from the login screen. The old options (from 4/5) for choosing your session aren't present. I've googled a bit on this but don't seem to be using a good search string as most of the hits have nothing to do with this and the rest aren't helpful.

So, just wondering if anyone knows what I need to do to "turn on" session choosing from the login screen, and how to include the failsafe terminal.

so, if I understand correctly, you want to be able to choosoe "Gnome", "XFCE", etc., etc. from the login screen, right?

the feature is there, but it doesn't show up until you've chosen a username either from the list displayed, or entered one manually. so, enter a user ID and then choose, before completing the password.

If you install xorg-x11-xinit-session you get a option once you've entered a username that will run your ~/.xsession or ~/.Xclients files (if they exist)

You can use the file it installs (/usr/share/xsessions/xinit-compat.desktop) as a template to create your own 'desktop' file that will start what you like - I have a /usr/share/xsessions/failsafe.desktop file that just starts xterm

James Pearson

Thanks for the tips, James and Fred. I was able to get the failsafe session offered as a login option... but I am now running into problems having the secondary script execute within the xterm. The way the setup used to work on centos4, a user walks up to the computer, logs in on the guest user creation account and if they are not logging in on the main server, the account shell logs them into the main server and then executes the guest user creation script. On the centos6 machines, it is refusing to work that way.

If I just have "Exec=/usr/bin/xterm" in failsafe.desktop I can get the xterm to appear with just a normal prompt, with no automatic script execution.

If I put "Exec=/usr/bin/xterm -e ssh guest@server" it pops up a second password entry but then kicks out after the password is entered.

If I put anything else in the Exec field, I just get a regular gnome desktop.

I'm not sure what else to try, or how to get the script to run in the xterm automatically... there's probably something really silly that I'm missing, but at this point I've been staring at this so long I'm just not seeing it.

Thanks! Miranda

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 2:54 AM, James Pearson james-p@moving-picture.com wrote:

Miranda Hawarden-Ogata wrote:

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If I just have "Exec=/usr/bin/xterm" in failsafe.desktop I can get the xterm to appear with just a normal prompt, with no automatic script execution.

If I put "Exec=/usr/bin/xterm -e ssh guest@server" it pops up a second password entry but then kicks out after the password is entered.

If I put anything else in the Exec field, I just get a regular gnome desktop.

I'm not sure what else to try, or how to get the script to run in the xterm automatically... there's probably something really silly that I'm missing, but at this point I've been staring at this so long I'm just not seeing it.

You could write a simple script that does all you need and just call this script via the "Exec=..." line - this is actually what I do in my failsafe.desktop file - although I don't know if this will help in your case

James Pearson

Thanks, James, that did the trick. So now I have set up two desktops, one a vanilla xterm and the other specifically for this purpose, runs my script in a gnome-terminal and it appears to be working properly, no funky pop-ups or anything. Thanks again for your help!

Thanks! Miranda

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Nathan Duehr denverpilot@me.com wrote:

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Thanks, James, that did the trick. So now I have set up two desktops, one a vanilla xterm and the other specifically for this purpose, runs my script in a gnome-terminal and it appears to be working properly, no funky pop-ups or anything. Thanks again for your help!

Glad you got it working Miranda. A silly side-question...

Would a regular ol' text console have done what was needed? CTRL-ALT-F1...

Did your users need the real-estate of an X based terminal in the recovery console?

-- Nate Duehr denverpilot@me.com

Nate, to be honest I'm not 100% sure, but I think it would not... the script needs to be functional whether the user is sshing in from a remote location or sitting at the workstation, and it needs to be automatic. As soon as they log in as that user, it runs the guest user creation script and verifies that they are permitted to create an account at this time. Also, the main server is completely blocked by the firewall, so the user "leapfrogs" over by sshing to the one computer with external ssh access which then ssh the user over to the main server where they can do the account set up. Currently the same script works whether they sit down at a console and log in as the creation user or if they remotely login, and it needs to stay like that, otherwise it gets too messy to maintain.

Not sure if I answered your question or not :)

Thanks! Miranda