Version: ConfigVersion=2.3 (using KDE KDE 3.3.92) Installed from: Gentoo Packages OS: Linux It seems that with ConfigVersion=2.3 of kdmrc, the "Xservers" file has been merged into kdmrc. The Problem now is that I can't set up kdm to run as XDMCP server only, it always tries to start an local X-Server. In the old config one could simply comment all lines of the XServers config file to prevent that, but with the new config it seems that even 'StaticServers=""' defaults to 'StaticServers=":0"'. With the box in question sitting in a rack with no monitor attached, it's quite useless to start a local X, even worse, the unconfigured X kdm tries to start causes the machine to lock up upon hardware detection.
you tried really hard, did you? There are plenty of ways to disable the X server startup. The most obvious setting the ServerAttempts to 0
> The most obvious setting the ServerAttempts to 0 > incidentally, this does not work. ;) but, indeed, StaticServers= WORKSFORME (without quotes, of course - no key in whichever kconfig file needs/groks them).
Yep, you're right, there was probably something else wrong... I got it working with the following changes to kdmrc (not sure which one actually did the trick) [General] StaticServers= ... [X-:*-Core] ServerAttempts=0 ServerCmd=/bin/true ... and I removed the [X-:0-Core/Greeter] sections (they were empty). Thanks for your time, and next time I'll try a bit harder before bugging you.
As of Sun Oct 25 15:23:24 PDT 2009 kdm still creates a softlink Xservers -> ../../X11/xdm/Xservers in ${kde_confdir}, and text is written into the file. The README mentions that Xservers exists, but it doesn't mention that the file is useless. Finally, googling for how to setup XDMCP with KDE all yields incorrect instructions on how to prevent X startup. This bug report is the only place I have seen that correctly shows how to prevent the X server from starting.
That symlink is created by the Fedora kde-settings-kdm package, it's not a bug in upstream KDM.