Re. http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2003/06/30/0026.html

Please do not force X to start just because the server is installed.

First, forcing xdm as an interface to X seems undesirable.  It is
easier to know what's going on in a system that by default runs a
minimal number of services and where you explicitly turn on what
you want (e.g., xdm).  The more things that you have to hunt down and
kill off, the worse, unless a feature is so central that nearly
everyone uses it.  (And I don't think that xdm qualifies as that.)
(It's not as if xdm is the only way to run X, even if you could
safely assume that every user of a system with X installed wants
to use X.)

Second, it makes it harder to get it right.  If the X configuration is
screwed up, you may end up not being able to login, if xdm's login is the
only way in.  To date, the NetBSD installer has never made any effort to
get X configured, and automated attempts to probe & configure for X have
been problematic.  Until X can be configured correctly with near 100%
reliability, I think that this is simply a bad idea.

Third, the installer is basically an installer, *not* a system
configuration tool.  It doesn't walk you through setting up rc.conf,
just because you've installed the rest of NetBSD.  Why should it
walk you through configuring X, just because you've installed the
X server?  The configuration that sysinst does is only the bare
minimum required in order to do its real task (installation): It
can format your disk, and if you do a network isntall I gather that
it can save your network config settings.  Other than that, it
doesn't configure much for you.  If sysinst is to start doing
configuration, then I submit that there are other things it should
do before worrying about the thorny problems of X: Setting a root
password, creating one or more non-root accounts, making sure a
network configuration is in-place, going through a checklist of
standard servers, setting up /etc/hosts.* for TCP wrappers, ...
Those, I think, could be more usefully and effectively handled by
sysinst than attempting to get your X server set up.


My 2-and-a-bit cents' worth.  (^&


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/