[CentOS] centos6 - failsafe terminal on login screen

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Pearson" <james-p at moving-picture.com>
> fred smith wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 05:36:19PM -1000, Miranda Hawarden-Ogata wrote:
>>
>>>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 at 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