> I am running RedHat Linux 4.0 on my PC at work. Once logged in, I can
> set the screensaver properties with xset command. However, when I am
> logged out, the screensaver does not activate and xdm shows the X login
> screen forever. It looks like xdm deactivates the screensaver somewhere
> during the initialization process. I went through the xdm man page but I
> couldn't find anything useful. Does anybody know how to make the
> screensaver work at the login screen?
> Thank you.
> --
> Do-Hoon Kwon
i use xscreensaver, because,well, it rocks. it works with xdm, but any
screensaver should -- the problem is from where it's called.
according to the man page for xscreensaver:
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USING XDM(1)
You can run xscreensaver from your xdm session, so that
the screensaver will run even when nobody is logged in on
the console. Simply add "xscreensaver &" to your
/usr/lib/X11/xdm/Xsetup file. Because xdm grabs the key-
board, keypresses will not make the screensaver deacti-
vate, but any mouse activity will.
(If your system does not seem to be executing the Xsetup
file, you may need to configure it to do so -- the tradi-
tional way to do this is to make that file the value of
the DisplayManager*setup resource in the xdm-config file.
See the man page for xdm(1) for more details.)
Users may want to add "xscreensaver-command -restart" to
their startup scripts, so that the screensaver will be
reinitialized with their private resource settings when
they log in.
It is safe to run this program as root (as xdm is likely
to do.) If run as root, xscreensaver changes its effec-
tive user and group ids to something safe (like "nobody")
before connecting to the X server or launching user-speci-
fied programs.
Locking doesn't work if the screensaver is launched by
xdm. To get around this, you can run the screensaver from
xdm without locking, and kill and restart it from your
personal X startup script to enable locking.
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scott arrington
by 