LightDM

Lightdm LightDM is a cross-desktop display manager that aims to be the standard display manager for the X.org X server.

Installation

Currently, lightdm^AUR resides in the AUR. Install it like any other AUR package.

Enabling Lightdm

Lightdm can be loaded on startup by entering it in the daemons array in rc.conf, or by appending the following line to inittab:

x:5:respawn:/usr/sbin/lightdm 2>&1 /dev/null

Note: The 'inittab' method is the preferred method to use a graphical greeter.

For systems using systemd, Lightdm also has a systemd service file, start it with systemctl start lightdm.service or enable it for boot with systemctl enable lightdm.service.

See Display Manager for detailed instructions.

Required Configuration

Lightdm will only show a blank screen until a greeter is chosen. Define one in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf as follows:

Example:

greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter

Additional greeters are available in the AUR. To see which greeters are installed, look in /usr/share/xgreeters. Do not include the .desktop extension.

Note: The following requires xorg-server-xephyr to be installed.

It is possible to test lightdm with the following command:

$ lightdm --test-mode -c /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Optional Configuration and Tweaks

Changing Background Images/Colors

Users wishing to customize the wallpaper on the greeter screen need to edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf defining the background variable.

Example:

background=/usr/share/pixmaps/black_and_white_photography-wallpaper-1920x1080.jpg

Note: It is recommended to place png or jpg files in /usr/share/pixmaps since the lightdm user needs read access to the wallpaper file.

Users wishing to have a flat color (no image) may simply set the background variable to a hex color.

Example:

background=#000000

Changing the Icon

Users wishing to customize the icon (by default, the 'computer' graphic) should follow this 3-step procedure:

1. Copy a 64x64 image to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/devices
2. Run gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/hicolor
3. Edit /usr/share/lightdm-gtk-greeter/greeter.ui

Search for 'image1' and edit the 'property' xml to be the filename (less the extension). By default it should be 'computer' by default.

Sources of Arch-centric 64x64 Icons

The archlinux-artwork package in [extra] contains some nice examples that install to /usr/share/archlinux/icons and that can be copied to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/devices as follows:

# find /usr/share/archlinux/icons -name "*64*" -exec cp {} /usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/devices \;

After copying, the archlinux-artwork package can be removed.

Enabling Autologin

Edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and change these lines to:

[SeatDefaults]
autologin-user=your_user
autologin-user-timeout=0
pam-service=lightdm-autologin

This last one might need to be created: /etc/pam.d/lightdm-autologin

Add:

#%PAM-1.0
auth requisite pam_nologin.so
auth required pam_env.so
auth requisite pam_permit.so
auth sufficient pam_succeed_if.so uid >= 1000 quiet
auth required pam_deny.so
account required pam_unix.so
password required pam_deny.so
session required pam_loginuid.so
-session optional pam_systemd.so
session optional pam_keyinit.so revoke
session required pam_limits.so
session required pam_unix.so

NumLock ON

Install the numlockx package and the edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf adding the following line:

greeter-setup-script=/usr/bin/numlockx on