On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, Jaye Inabnit ke6sls wrote: > Or anyone for that matter - can you suggest a site for reading up on > what kdm/xdm does. Why one would load this. what it does, what it's for > etc. I have never had a firm understanding of any of it and I would like to > learn much more about it, but never found any place to learn about it. The > books I have don't talk about them at all.
no not really, but take a look at http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue27/kaszeta.html for some examples and the XWindow-User-HOWTO for a basic explanation and of course there's man xdm. The part which I find hardest to understand is the network part, so let's give that a try: Let's have two hosts: workstation server hostA ------- hostB Let's say that hostA and hostB both run xdm: hostA runs xdmA and hostB runs xdmB. hostA is going to run an X server. host B does not need to. Now of course in terms of X, A is the server and B is the client. Normally xdm on A will start the X server on A, present a login screen, let the user login and executes /etc/X11/Xsession. But you can also run (also without xdm running on hostA) X -indirect hostB or X -query hostB on hostA to connect to the xdm running on hostB. Then hostB will present its login screen (can be Solaris or anything else X). And from there on your using your computer A as an X terminal: all programs run on B but screen/keyboard input/output is done by the X server on A. Now instead of presenting a login screen straight away you can also instruct xdm in /etc/X11/xdm/Xaccess to bring up a chooser screen listing the hosts. If both hostA and hostB are running xdm and give access at that point it will list hostA hostB the the user can choose one of these, and the xdm on the chosen host presents its login screen. Note that you can either have the chooser from hostA or the chooser from hostB. all similar for kdm. That's what I understand of it. Bart
