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From: brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Should login xterms show /etc/motd?  (R5 wet dreams?)
Message-ID: <1990Jul23.201745.11646@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 23 Jul 90 20:17:45 GMT
References: <1990Jul18.200754.13129@cs.umn.edu> <678@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM> <1990Jul20.180959.21846@cs.umn.edu> <5877@crltrx.crl.dec.com>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.
Lines: 34

jg@crl.dec.com (Jim Gettys) writes:

>> xterm has half of /bin/login in it already - it can update /etc/utmp
>> and /usr/adm/wtmp, chown the pty, etc.  Why not throw the rest in?  It
>> would make things much less confusing for our novice users - xterm
>> logins would appear nearly identical to normal terminal logins.

>xterm has all this junk in it for historical (hysterical) reasons.
>This doesn't mean it is a good idea to add hacks on hacks; therein
>lies long term madness.  xdm did not exist at the time the hacks were
>going into xterm.

Ok - so the best fix would be to:
  Have xterm NOT do the utmp/wtmp stuff.  (Quick Imakefile hack.)
  Have "login" xterms run "/bin/login -h $DISPLAY -fp $USER" as root.

The one itty-bitty teeny-tiny problem with this is that not all
/bin/login's support "-f".  So some folks (me included) may have to
grab the 4.3bsd login (on uunet, among others) and put it someplace
like /usr/bin/X11/login...

Could support for this be worked into xterm?  Could the 4.3 login be
included in the X release?  (I'd assume the situation would be similar
to that of compress.)

Or is this too much work for too little gain?  The end result would be
an xterm login identical to a normal terminal/rlogin/telnet connection.
I doubt too many of my users would actually notice, but that was the
whole idea - seamless.

Well, back to work...

Brian
brsmith@cs.umn.edu