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From: "Gallagher, Mick" <mick.gallagher@roke.co.uk>
To: "'Chris.Smith@raytheon.co.uk'" <Chris.Smith@raytheon.co.uk>,
	'Christoph Sold' <so@i-clue.de>,
	'Lowell Gilbert' <lowell@world.std.com>
Cc: "'questions@freebsd.org'" <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Cannot login as root using xdm in 3.4R
Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 10:21:55 +0100 
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Hi All,

Thanks for your help with this problem.

Just thought I'd send this note to the list so people can find this
information in the question archives.

The problem seemed to be a result of both the contents of the .xsession
file, and the shell I was using at the time.

When logging in as a normal user, there was no problem with going through
xdm. The .xsession file consisted of one line: exec startkde; and the
default shell for the user was bourne.

However, this didn't work so well when logging in as root. The .xsession
file was the same, but the default shell was csh. (The contents of
.xsession-errors read something like 'can't find startkde').

I can only presume that 'exec' within csh spawned a subshell, and in this
case $PATH was not defined.

This isn't the whole answer, however. I changed root's .xsession file to
something like the following:

#!/bin/csh
<set path here>
exec startkde

Surprisingly, this worked; even though I mistakenly included 'exec' in my
revised .xsession file. In this instance, 'exec' could not have spawned
another shell with no path defined!

Although its all working now, the reason why is still a mystery.

And anyway, as Lowell pointed out, perhaps I shouldn't be running X as root
anyhow!

Thanks for your help.

Mick


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