I hacked a script together to get Mythtv to auto start and autologin with FVWM2, the startup services from the Mythtv documents and the FVWM2 config.

I was not happy with the KDE autologin and wanted to use a light weight windows manager. I found an article in the archives here but I could not get the openvt to auto login on Mandrake 9.1. I did some googling and found an article at LawLUG that almost worked. I put the two together and got this.

Using your favorite text editor create a file named autologinmythtv.c and type in this short C program:

int main() {
execlp( “login”, “login”, “-f”, “mythtv”, 0);
}
* I uses mythtv as the user on my system *

The execlp system call invokes the command “login -f mythtv” and replaces the current processing context with this invocation. The man page for login describes the action of the -f argument. Compile this tiny C program using the GNU C-compiler:

$ gcc -o autologinmythtv autologinmythtv.c

Gain root privileges (using su) and copy the executable to /usr/local/bin:

# cp autologinmythtv /usr/local/bin/

Next edit your /etc/inittab and change
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
to
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -n -l /usr/local/bin/autologinmyth 38400 tty1

Here is the script to add to the user mythtv .bash_profile
/home/mythtv/.bash_profile

if [ -z “$DISPLAY” ] && [ $(tty) == /dev/vc/1 ]
then
while [ 1 ]; do
startx
sleep 5
done
fi

This basically checks to make sure it is ok to start X by checking you are local and on the first virtual console.
This allows us to still log in on other terminals and remote in without X getting in the way. Next we create and endless loop that starts X and mythfrontend with the FVWM config files xinitrc and fvwmrc. Then if myth crashes or you need to reset, just ALT-CTRL-Backspace and X will restart after 5 seconds. This way my Wife does not have to login and mess on the command line to get MythTV going when I am not around.

Hope this helps someone out there.

Cheers…