We talked about this in IRC last night (read "this morning"), and we hacked it into a working condition. Today, nightflier dropped into the channel and straightened me out on the xinitrc difference between STD and Light:
There are several ways to get from a terminal session to an X session. Two of those ways are fairly standard:
- Edit /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc, or link it to an existing xinitrc.<DE> to select the system-default X session. Users wanting something else then write their own ~/.xinitrc. 7.2 Light does this.
- Place a .xinitrc in /etc/skel/, so newly created users have one. The version in skel starts the usual DE, of course. Users change that by editing. 7.2 Standard does this.
Slim's notes suggest providing a ~/.xinitrc somewhat like its own template. You did that, which overwrote the existing, working ~/.xinitrc. And now you know a lot more and had more fun than if everything had gone smoothly first time.
For someone looking in on this, what finally got the session to start with needed auths was to replace the end of Slim's "login_cmd" line with
. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.xfce. But that left no choice of session either at login time, or by a regular user's edit of ~/.xinitrc.
How 'bout this?: Think of Slim as a
startx substitute. Read startx(1) and write an /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.slim that works as that manpage describes, Allow for a "system-default" session to be started if no parameters are given, and for startup of the indicated session when one is. Hint: xinitrc.* are in the same directory. Don't get in startx's way, nor in gdm's.
Enjoy