Could anyone point me in the right direction to have a linux box boot and automatically log in as a default user (luser?).

The assignment I have requires that we create a package that can be installed on a 486 w/16M & 500M Hdd; startup and automatically log in as a default user; attach to a windows server and run a session through rdesktop.

Any hints are greatly appreciated.

You probably don't need to log in as a user, which is fortunate, since it's bad design and probably not possible without a lot of hacking.

Take a look at how your Linux machine starts up gdm/xdm (probably via init and it's config file, inittab). It should give you some ideas about how to implement this.

Basically, your system will start an X server and then run rdesktop on top of it. No login will be needed, since, effectively, root will be telling it what to do, but doing it as a different user.

I think I understand, Thanks

I'll let you know how things go.

There is a Howto on creating a kiosk that went into stuff like that. You can find it at tldp.org .