Create new user and enable autologon Startx/LXDE

Question

I am new to the forums and Linux in general. I am currently running Debian Wheezy with the GUI enable. For administrative purposes and other related tasks, I want to discontinue the use of the default user account "pi". Additionally, I would like to autologin a newly create user to the GUI desktop.

I created a new user and enabled sudo rights via the sudo visudo command and I commented out the "pi" user account line.

SomeUSER ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

I edited this file "/etc/inittab" to include the new user

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty --autologin SomeUser --noclear tty1

I edited this file "/etc/passwd" and change the "pi" user to the new user. This change seems to prevent the GUI desktop from loading.
SomeUser:x:1000:1000:,,,:/home/SomeUser:/bin/bash

What am I doing wrong that is not allowing the newly created user to autologin to the GUI desktop?

Answer 1

I believe I figured this out. Reviewing the commands in this link shows that editing rc.local and adding the command su -l USERNAME -c start x

Can someone explain why this works with respect to adding the "startx" command? I would have expected to see the "startx" command already in the rc.local file if I initially executed the raspi-config to enable the GUI

Answer 2

Your question is rather confusing. If you are asking how to enable/disable GUI on logon execute sudo raspi-config where you will find a menu to set this.

Answer 3

Edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Change autologin-user to the new user.

Restart X or reboot.

Answer 4

Paul Crabb's method of editing the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf file works.

I used the raspi-config to enable automatically booting to the desktop with the PI user, then from terminal type: sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

find the line for autologin-user=pi and change pi to the desired username. ctrl+x to exit, Y to save.

reboot the pi. (sudo shutdown -r now) and it should boot into the desired user.