From: Divan Santana <divan@santanas.co.za>
To: Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com>
Cc: help-guix@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [HOWTO] Start X server manually instead of using a login manager
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2018 09:43:48 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <cuc4lgqquah.fsf@santanas.co.za> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87d0vjm0ct.fsf@gmail.com>
Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> writes:
> Hello,
>
> People often ask how they can use startx/xinit on GuixSD. It is
> possible, although it is not as easy as on other distros. Hopefully,
> this tutorial will answer some questions on the subject.
>
> At first, a couple of points:
>
> - We will run X server with user privileges, so if something goes wrong,
> look at the X log, which is placed at "~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.N.log"
> by default.
>
> - We will run "xinit", not "startx": the latter is just a wrapper that
> does some preparations and runs "xinit". (startx is a usual shell
> script with a usual script's behavior: it does not like that Guix
> violates Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, so it successfully fails to
> start).
>
> Now the steps you need to do to use "xinit":
>
> 1. Install xinit, X server and required modules to some guix profile,
> for example:
>
> guix package -i xinit xorg-server xf86-input-libinput xf86-video-fbdev xf86-video-nouveau
>
> 2. Make "~/.xinitrc" file. If you don't know what its content should
> be, just put "exec xterm" there, or even better read:
>
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xinit
>
> 3. Running "xinit" requires specifying multiple arguments, so you will
> probably make an auxiliary script to run it. This script will look
> like this:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> #!/bin/sh
>
> DIR=$HOME/.guix-profile
>
> $DIR/bin/xinit -- $DIR/bin/Xorg :0 vt1 -keeptty \
> -configdir $DIR/share/X11/xorg.conf.d \
> -modulepath $DIR/lib/xorg/modules
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> Note that using the current terminal ("vt1" in this case) and
> "-keeptty" is required, otherwise X server refuses to start without
> root privileges.
>
> For testing purposes, you may change the above arguments to ":1 vt2",
> switch to vt2 (Ctrl-Alt-F2) and run this script.
>
> 4. Finally (if the above script works), you can remove login manager
> from your os services (if you use %desktop-services):
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> (use-modules
> ;; ...
> (srfi srfi-1) ; for 'remove'
> (gnu services desktop)
> (gnu services xorg))
>
> (operating-system
> ;; ...
> (services
> (remove (lambda (service)
> (eq? (service-kind service) slim-service-type))
> %desktop-services)))
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
To help others, a few other notes.
To auto start x upon login one can do something like
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(mingetty-service (mingetty-configuration
(tty "tty1")
(auto-login "ds")))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
And this in you bashrc/zshrc.
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
if [[ ! $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]]; then
exec $HOME/bin/startx.sh
fi
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
Also I needed to set these in order for my icons to be detected
again. Failing to do so, the icons aren't found and some apps crash like
libreoffice.
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
export XDG_DATA_DIRS="/run/current-system/profile/share:$HOME/.guix-profile/share:/run/current-system/profile/share"
export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS="$HOME/.guix-profile/etc/xdg:/run/current-system/profile/etc/xdg"
export XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config"
export XDG_CACHE_HOME="$HOME/.cache"
export XDG_DATA_HOME="$HOME/.local/share"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
I'm still strangely getting this error when my terminals (termite)
launch since switching to this method:
tput: unknown terminal "xterm-termite"
Not sure why that is yet.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-07-23 8:15 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-07-19 20:33 [HOWTO] Start X server manually instead of using a login manager Alex Kost
2018-07-19 21:56 ` Divan Santana
2018-07-23 7:43 ` Divan Santana [this message]
2018-07-23 9:52 ` zloster
2018-07-26 15:34 ` Ludovic Courtès
2024-02-26 14:47 ` Tomas Volf
2024-02-26 17:28 ` Felix Lechner via
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=cuc4lgqquah.fsf@santanas.co.za \
--to=divan@santanas.co.za \
--cc=alezost@gmail.com \
--cc=help-guix@gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this external index
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.