autox

This program automatically logs in a specified user in and runs the xinit program.

On a sysvinit system, the benefit of using this, rather than starting xinit directly from inittab, is that you get the privileges as defined in the PAM rules. Also, the program terminates when X is quit. Thus it can be run repeatedly from inittab and automatically log the user in every time.

autox has successfully been used for the same purpose in on an Upstart based system, and a Runit based system.

Install

Simply make and put the binary where you want it. Make sure you install autox.pam as /etc/pam.d/autox.

Upstart Script

env USER=username
env DISPLAY=:0.0

description "autox startup script"
author "Start in X session on boot"

emits login-session-start
emits desktop-session-start

start on runlevel [5] #(filesystem and stopped udevtrigger)
stop on runlevel [0136]

respawn

#script
exec /usr/local/bin/autox $USER 2>/tmp/autox.log
#end script

Runit Script

#!/bin/sh
USER=username

exec 2>&1
exec setsid -w agetty -a $USER -n -l /usr/local/bin/autox -o $USER tty7 38400 linux

Note: your .xinitrc should only exec one program, and it should remain in the foreground. If you exec anything as a background process then it will run outside of the runsvdir process tree and will not be managed by it.

License

MIT License