Fedora LXDE auto login and Kodi auto start

Here is small tip how to set up auto login and Kodi auto start on top of the Fedora 22 LXDE spin – Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. With settings in two files, after reboot Fedora should run Kodi without login screen. These two configuration files are lxdm.conf and .dmrc in user home directory.

First as root user open /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf and at the top set autologin username to enable auto login. In my case (username is “kodi”) it looks like this:

[base]
## uncomment and set autologin username to enable auto login
autologin=kodi

With defined autlogin parameter, LXDM will automatically log in user after Linux boot. All details can be read on ArchWiki pages.

Next step is to create .dmrc in user home directory. For my user “kodi” full path of the file is /home/kodi/.dmrc with the following content:

[Desktop]
Session=kodi

And basically that’s it. LXDE spin of Fedora 22 should boot to Kodi automatically.

For the end here is one more advice. I had to configure pulseaudio for simultaneous HDMI and analog output and instead of “Session=kodi” line, session in .dmrc was temporary set to openbox:

[Desktop]
Session=openbox

This will bring minimalistic X windows just enough for starting terminal window (menus are displayed on right mouse button). Open terminal and from command line start Kodi (type in “kodi” and press enter). Kodi will likely run in full screen, so it will be needed to set “windowed mode”:

SYSTEM -> Settings -> System -> Video output -> Display Mode -> Windowed

Now Kodi will run in window and another terminal is free for settings. After configuring is finished, return session to kodi and set full screen.

1 thought on “Fedora LXDE auto login and Kodi auto start”

  1. It’s 18 months later and I appreciate your posting, as each flavor of Linux seems to accomplish this differently. I was tired of battling KDE/Plasma to provide a cursor and decided to give lxdm a try and with your article, I accomplished auto-login in minutes, and I was never able to get it done in KDE/Plasma. THANK YOU.

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