This is described in the Arch Wiki:
Create a new service file similar to
getty@.service
by copying it to/etc/systemd/system/
cp /usr/lib/systemd/system/getty@.service /etc/systemd/system/autologin@.service
This basically copies the already existing getty@.service
to a new file autologin@.service
which can be freely modifed. It is copied to /etc/systemd/system
because that's where site-specific unit files are stored. /usr/lib/systemd/system
contains unit files provided by packages so you shouldn't change anything in there.
You will then have to symlink that autologin@.service
to the getty service for the tty on which you want to autologin, for examply for tty1:
ln -s /etc/systemd/system/autologin@.service /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/getty@tty1.service`
Up to now, this is still the same as the usual getty@.service
file, but the most important part is to modify the autologin@.service
to actually log you in automatically. To do that, you only need to change the ExecStart
line to read
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a USERNAME %I 38400
The difference between the ExecStart
line in getty@.service
and autologin@.service
is only the -a USERNAME
which tells agetty to log the user with the username USERNAME in automatically.
Now you only have to tell systemd to reload its daemon files and start the service:
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start getty@tty1.service
(I'm not sure if the service will start properly if you're already logged in on tty1, the safest way is propably to just reboot instead of starting the service).
If you then want to automatically start X, insert the following snippet into your ~/.bash_profile
(taken from the wiki again):
if [[ -z $DISPLAY ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then
exec startx
fi
You will have to modify your ~/.xinitrc
to start your desktop environment, how to do that depends on the DE and is probably described in the Arch wiki as well.