I’ve removed slim as my login manager on the EEE and now just have it boot and automagically start X. It was pretty simple, with a little help from this article from the knowledgeable debianadmin folks.
I’ll roll with this setup for awhile and see how functional it is. Since I don’t have a need for multiple users on the EEE, I expect it will remain like this a long while. Below the fold is a recap of what I did from the article.
Edit the /etc/inittab file and look for the following line:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
Comment this line out and replace it with the following:
1:2345:respawn:/bin/login -f USERNAME tty1 </dev/tty1 >/dev/tty1 2>&1
As far as I can tell, this runs the login command, which a login manager would use as well, with USERNAME pre-authenticated (the -f). The “2>&1” redirects STANDERR to STDOUT, and it looks like tty1 takes input from /dev/tty1 (tty1 </dev/tty1) and output is also directed to /dev/tty1 (>/dev/tty1). Don’t take this as gospel- it’s just my best guess based on what I know about bash redirection.
The last step is to edit, or create, a .bash_profile. This file is run at login time, as opposed to the .bashrc file which is used when launching terminals from within X… I think. Anyway, add the following line to the end of .bash_profile:
startx
I’ll mention that the .bash_profile should reside in the login directory for the user supplied in the login command in the edited inittab. Lastly, disable or remove your graphic login and you’ll be all set the next time you fire your system up.