Installing a new login screen on RHEL

So you’re running Oracle on REHL, and you’re tired of looking at the same old, boring login screen. Or you may be running multiple VMs and want to make a visual difference between them. Here is a way to edit the GDM (Gnome Display Manager) to add a few more themes that will provide you with a different login screen, and possibly, a cool looking Oracle VM.

To get some new GDM themes go to http://art.gnome.org, select Themes>GDM Greeter, and choose download the ones you like. Once downloaded, unzip them to /usr/share/gdm/themes.

RHEL 5 comes with a number of commands that allow you to manage the available GDM themes. To test a theme and see what it looks like, you can use:

$ gdmthemetester console <themename>

Once you’ve decided on a theme, use the following command to select it:

$ gdmsetup <themename>

Finally, apply the theme:

$ gdm-restart

Have fun!

Update:

To change the login background on RHEL 6 do the following:

sudo cp /usr/share/applications/gnome-appearance-properties.desktop /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow

Log out, then a pop-up window that allows you to select a background picture will come up. Choose a back ground, log in and execute:

sudo unlink /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/gnome-appearance-properties.desktop

to keep the pop-up window from coming up every time you log in.