kdm.options(5)

NAME
kdm.options - configuration options for X display manager

DESCRIPTION
/etc/X11/kdm/kdm.options contains a set of flags that determine some of the behavior of the X display manager kdm(1).

/etc/X11/kdm/kdm.options may contain comments, which begin with a hash mark and end at the next newline, just like comments in shell scripts. The rest of the file consists of options which are expressed as words separated by hyphens, with only one option per line. If an option is present with the "no-" prefix, or absent, it is disabled, otherwise it is considered enabled.

Available options are:

ignore-nologin
    Normally, the contents of the /etc/nologin file will be displayed using xmessage(1) (if xmessage is available), and the user will be returned to the kdm login screen after the xmessage is dismissed. If this option is enabled, kdm starts a session as usual (after the xmessage is dismissed, if xmessage is available).

generate-sessiontypes
    Automatically generate the SessionTypes= line in /etc/kde2/kdmrc. If this option is enabled, kdm will use the menu system to automatically determine what window/session managers are installed on your system as they are installed or removed and will base the SessionTypes listing on that.

restart-on-upgrade
    Enable this option with caution on "production" machines; it causes the kdm daemon to be stopped and restarted on upgrade, even if the process has children (which means it is managing X sessions). Typically when a package that contains a daemon is being installed or upgraded, its maintainer scripts stop a running daemon process before installing the new binary, and restart it after the new binary is installed. Stopping kdm causes immediate termination of any sessions it manages; in some situations this could be an unwelcome surprise (for instance, for remote kdm users who had no idea the administrator was performing system maintenance). On the other hand, for machines that stay up for long periods of time, leaving the old daemon running can be a bad idea if the new version has, for instance, a fix for a security vulnerability (overwriting kdm's executable on the file system has no effect on the copy of kdm in memory). The kdm pre-removal script checks to see if the kdm process has any children; if it does, it is possible that someone's session would be killed by stopping kdm, so a warning is issued and an opportunity to abort the upgrade of kdm is provided. If this option is disabled (the Debian default), kdm will be not be stopped or started during an install or upgrade; the administrator will have to do so by hand (with "/etc/init.d/kdm restart", or by rebooting the system) before the newly installed kdm binary is used.

run-xconsole
    This option opens an xconsole(1) client to catch messages that would normally go to the Linux virtual console and thus be missed in many cases by the user. By default, this option is only supported in the Xsetup file for display :0 (/etc/X11/kdm/Xsetup_0), but any Xsetup script may use it if appropriately edited. This option is disabled by default because sensitive information may be made visible to untrusted people (anyone who can see the screen, since one does not have to be logged in to view the kdm greeter screen). Before enabling this option, it is a good idea to check and/or modify the system log daemon configuration.

use-sessreg
    If this option is enabled (the Debian default), the sessreg program will be invoked to register X sessions managed by kdm in the utmp and wtmp files. Otherwise, it is not, and the utmp and wtmp files will have no record of kdm sessions.

SEE ALSO
sessreg(1), xconsole(1), xmessage(1), kdm(1)

AUTHOR
This manpage was written by Branden Robinson for Debian GNU/Linux.