Login Manager

Did you know that Solaris will get it's knickers in a twist if it boots in the absence of its dhcp server. I discovered this when my firewall/dhcp server went down this week. Once of the first symptoms you will have is that the Desktop login will fail to startup, so you are stuck with a command line login prompt instead of the usual graphical login.

To get around this login as root and issue the following command.

/usr/dt/bin/dtlogin -daemon ; exit

Some other interesting commands that effect the Desktop Login are.

/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -kill
- (Kills the daemon that causes the login prompt to start.)

/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -e
- (Enable the daemon to run automagically.)

/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -d
-(Disable the daemon from running.)

Unce you've played with these you can try. (Kill and disable dtlogin first).

svcadm enable -s gdm2-login
- (Which starts the Gnome login manager.... Much nicer than dtlogin).

svcadm disable -s gdm2-login
- (Disables it again).

This is the login manager that is affected by the Login Screen Setup dialog, under Applications-Utilities-Administration. Ever wondered why that wouldn't work, well now you know.

Finally if you want to have some fun go to http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/991/ for a bunch of cool login themes.