Installing And Configuring LightDM for XFCE On The Clockwork uConsole

If you have installed the uConsole_CM4_v0.1b_xfce_64bit.img image on your micro SD card then it will automatically log you in with the user cpi. If you configure the system to require a log in and restart then you will be met with a command line login prompt and XFCE won't start by default.

This is because the install of XFCE don't have a login manager, but installing one takes a little bit of configuration.

If you just want to start XFCE after you enter your login details then you need to add the following to your .bash_profile file.

if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ] ; then
  startxfce4
fi

With that in place, as soon as you have entered your credentials into the login prompt then you will be logged in.

If you want to have a nicer login experience then you need to install LightDM. This can be done using the following command.

sudo apt install lightdm

This will work, but due to the orientation of the screen in the uConsole the screen will be flipped on its side, so this needs to be corrected.

Add the following line to the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf file, somewhere in the "[SeatDefaults]" section.

greeter-setup-script=/etc/lightdm/greeter_setup.sh

Then make the file /etc/lightdm/greeter_setup.sh with the following contents.

#!/bin/bash
xrandr -o right
exit 0

You can ensure that the xrandr command works by running it on the terminal, the -o flag is used to denote the orientation of the screen.

Next, we need to ensure the script we created is executable.

sudo chmod +x /etc/lightdm/greeter_setup.sh

After you reboot you will then see the LightDM login screen, in the correct orientation.

The final step here, if you want to keep the XFCE settings that Clockwork originally created is to copy the contents of the configuration directory to your user profile. To do this run the following command to copy the directory.

sudo cp -r /home/cpi/.config/xfce4/. /home/yourusername/.config/xfce4/.

Then, reset the ownership of the directory so that it belongs to your user.

sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusername /home/yourusername/.config/

Reboot and you should now see the same dark profile as the original cpi user. You should probably delete the cpi user now that you have set up the device.

You can do all of this without updating the system, but it's probably a good idea to get the latest updates of the system.