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We have a very timid server whose only purpose was to run Apache and Nagios for asset monitoring. We are moving it center stage to drive a monitor for a 24/7 display of one of the Nagios screens in our IT room.

Due to the limited hardware resources of the machine, I want to install as little as possible to get this functionality. This means no window manager for sure. At present the machine boots up to a CLI login. I would like to change that to do the following:

  1. Auto login to a specified user account
  2. Launch an X session
  3. Run google-chrome --kiosk http://localhost/thepage/

There are a lot of instructions on how to achieve this on older versions of Ubuntu but with 10.04 and 10.10 the locations and method of startup has changed significantly.

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err. remove XDM/GDM completely and launch:

/bin/bash -c "su username -c startx"

edit /home/username/.xinitrc: google-chrome --kiosk http://localhost/thepage/

Chrome doesn't goes background; so once chrome is dead, X would stop.

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I need the autologin to be on boot which is that part that's giving me the most trouble. From what I gather, I need something in /etc/init.d/ and then I symlink to it from /etc/rc2.d/. – Jake Wharton Oct 1 '10 at 14:44
I will look for better Gentoo's /etc/conf.d/local.start alternative, don't know Ubuntu this good. – kagali-san Oct 1 '10 at 18:57

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