E17 User Guide/Entrance

Entrance is a login manager, similar to xdm, kdm, gdm and all the other various login managers. Entrance can log users into the e17 desktop as well as other environments (gnome, kde, xfce, etc).

There are two flavors of the e17 login manager: entrance & entranced. Most likely you will be wanting to use entranced, as it is a standalone daemon that creates a new X session, connects to it, and starts Entrance. On the other hand, entrance must connect to an existing X session.

To start entranced on system boot, first locate the init-script, by default found in /usr/local/etc/init.d (if you installed by hand), or /opt/e17/etc/init.d (using easy_e17). However, depending on your system, the file could be elsewhere.

The following assumes daemons are found in /etc/init.d:

To add the entranced daemon:

  ln -s <path-to-script> /etc/init.d/entranced
  Now you have the entranced daemon.

The following assumes most startup processes are initiated by rc.conf. If your system uses runlevels, then it may be easier to enable entranced using bum or another graphical runlevel editor.

To start entranced:

  edit rc.conf using your favorite text editor
     vim /etc/rc.conf
  Remove the startx daemon, and add the entranced daemon. For example, extract of my rc.conf:
  DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd alsa entranced fam)

• • Important. Entranced starts up its own X server. It is recommended to disable any other x servers before using entranced.

• fam is also a convenient process to run if you use thunar or some other file manager. It notifies file managers of changes to files, so their guis are updated.

By default, (newer) Entrance contains the path to enlightenment_start, and will be able to log into e17. However, if this is not the case, then entrance_config.cfg must be updated. Usually it is located as in /etc/entrance_config.cfg, but possibly also /opt/e17/etc, or other locations. Once again, slocate can be used to find it.

As it is a binary, you must run ecore_config config to change it. Usually:

  ecore_config /path/to/entrance_config.cfg set /entrance/session/1/session str /path/to/E17_wrapper_script.