SLiM (Simple Login Manager)

SLiM est un acronyme pour Simple Login Manager. Si vous utilisez un des environnements de bureau légers comme Xfce, Fluxbox, Blackbox ou WindowMaker, SLiM peut vous intéresser.

Slackware est livré avec deux gestionnaires de login qui peuvent faire le travail mais qui ont chacun des inconvénients :

• KDM (lourd)
• XDM (visuellement disgracieux)

SLiM ne fait pas partie de l'installation standard de Slackware mais vous pouvez facilement l'installer à partir de SBo.

Tous les gestionnaires de login sont supposés démarrer au niveau 4 ; vérifiez que c'est bien le cas en regardant /etc/inittab et en vérifiant que vous avez bien ces lignes

# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:4:initdefault:

Vous pouvez aussi vérifier le niveau d’exécution du système en tapant la commande :

# who -r
         run-level 4  2012-07-04 21:44                   last=S

In the example shown above, the current runlevel of your machine is also “4”.

Now edit /etc/rc.d/rc.4 and add a few lines to start SLiM automatically on boot. The order is important here. Insert the stanza right before the one that manages GDM, like this:

# Tell the viewers what's going to happen...
echo "Starting up X11 session manager..."

# Start SLiM...
if [ -x /usr/bin/slim ]; then
  exec /usr/bin/slim
fi

# Try to use GNOME's gdm session manager.  This comes first because if
# gdm is on the machine then the user probably installed it and wants
# to use it by default:
if [ -x /usr/bin/gdm ]; then
  exec /usr/bin/gdm -nodaemon
fi

There's one last thing left to do before your shiny new login manager can be put to use. Run the following command as a normal user:

$ xwmconfig

This will launch Slackware's window manager selection dialog box. Choose your window manager (Xfce, Fluxbox, Blackbox, whatever) and hit OK. This spews out a new ~/.xinitrc file in your home directory. We won't go into the gory details of this file, since the one interesting thing about it is that it enables you to log in using SLiM.

SLiM's main configuration file is /etc/slim.conf. It's very clear and well commented and pretty much self-explanatory. For example, you might want to decide that you prefer activating numlock on boot. In that case, just uncomment the relevant line in slim.conf like this:

# Activate numlock when slim starts. Valid values: on|off
numlock             on

SLiM's default theme may or may not appeal to you. If the latter is the case, then you can either install another theme, or create your own theme from scratch.

SBo's slim build comes with an alternate theme called slackware-black, created by Frank Caraballo. You can activate this theme by editing the according line in /etc/slim.conf and replacing default with slackware-black, like this:

# current theme, use comma separated list to specify a set to 
# randomly choose from
current_theme       slackware-black

An alternative Slackware theme is available on ngc891's blog.

The SLiM website has a page with a collection of themes. Installing one or more of these themes is quite simple. Take a look in /usr/share/slim/themes. You'll see two directories: default and slackware-black. To install a theme, simply download the theme tarball and uncompress it in the /usr/share/slim/themes directory (as root, of course). To activate the theme, edit the current_theme line in /etc/slim.conf accordingly.

The site also sports a nice tutorial about your own theme creation.

• Originally written by Niki Kovacs