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FreeBSD Usage

Auto login on FreeBSD

By default, FreeBSD will prompt for user login after booting up. Since the product sponsor wants the web UI to be available immediately upon booting the device, we will need to auto login a user on startup, then use a chron job to tell Xorg to stream firefox in Kiosk mode into the CLI.

The first step to auto login is to edit the gettytab file located at /etc/gettytab. **Assuming the auto login username is usr, run the following commands as root to append new lines to the /etc/gettytab file.

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echo "# autologin" >> /etc/gettytab
echo "usr:\" >> /etc/gettytab
echo "        :ht:np:sp#115200:al=usr:" >> /etc/gettytab

Note: The console that is seen on the physical display is ttyv0. This console along with any other virtual ones are defined in /etc/ttys.

Lastly, specify which console the user should auto log in to. For this, edit the ttys file in /etc. Change ttyvo to specify the login username instead of Pc.

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console none                            unknown off secure
#
ttyv0   "/usr/libexec/getty usr"        xterm   onifexists secure
# Virtual terminals
ttyv1   "/usr/libexec/getty Pc"         xterm   onifexists secure
...

Now reboot the device and you should automatically be logged into the user specified above (on ‘ttyv0’/the display connected).

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