The officially official Devuan Forum!

jacksprat

Member

Registered: 2017-11-10

Posts: 54  

[SOLVED] Why is seatd a hard dependency?

I was removing packages that I didn't want on my Devuan 5 laptop [aim = frugal system].  As I could not see any reason for keeping the "seatd" package [no Display Manager, just Openbox], I tried to remove it.  When I tried this, "apt-get remove seatd" wanted to remove Xorg and many others that were important for my system.  Why is Seatd such a hard dependency in Devuan?  Thanks.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,435  

Re: [SOLVED] Why is seatd a hard dependency?

Is it also trying to remove libseat1 when it removes seatd?  When I try to remove libseat1, it wants to remove xorg. I can't try to remove seatd because it's not installed. Maybe you could apt install libseat1 to set it to manually installed so it doesn't get removed with seatd.

soren

Member

Registered: 2023-04-30

Posts: 93  

Re: [SOLVED] Why is seatd a hard dependency?

If there is package i would keep around it would be seatd over elogind. Seatd makes it possible to run graphics/input as a non root user. How do you login to openbox, using startx? The old way of starting x without a login manager or elogind was running X as root afaik?

Edit: more info here: https://sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/seatd/

Last edited by soren (2024-05-01 10:39:21)

jacksprat

Member

Registered: 2017-11-10

Posts: 54  

Re: [SOLVED] Why is seatd a hard dependency?

@soren:  thanks for the reply.  As I don't have a DM, After console login, i type "startx".  There is no elogind.  I do not knowingly run "startx" as root, and "ps -el | grep Xorg" shows that it is running as "me" and not root. Maybe "seatd" is doing this silently.  I will have to explore what is happening here.

On Void Linux, I run "startx" as "me", but I see that Xorg runs with uid=0;  not good.  Interestiingly. Void does not have seatd, Consolekit2, elogind or anything similar.

jacksprat

Member

Registered: 2017-11-10

Posts: 54  

Re: [SOLVED] Why is seatd a hard dependency?

@fsmithred:  thanks, "soren" has convinced me that I really want seatd, as it seems to allow Xorg to remain with uid=1000, before and after "startx".  I must now go back to Void Linux and see if "seatd" can achieve this there.

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,140  

Re: [SOLVED] Why is seatd a hard dependency?

Does Void Linux use Devuan's Xorg (i.e. from xserver-xorg-core package)?

That is the variant that includes using seatd rather than logind+dbus to mediate input device access, and it is forked by Devuan for that purpose. The forked version also allows a system setup where the UID/GID running Xorg has file mode access to the input device nodes, in which case it also has the option to spawn a seatd sub process for input device access mediation.

The Debian (non-forked) variant offers only input mediation via logind (over dbus). Though quite possibly Void Linux have their own Xorg variant of course.

jacksprat

Member

Registered: 2017-11-10

Posts: 54  

Re: [SOLVED] Why is seatd a hard dependency?

Hello @ralph.ronnquist.  Quick answer is I don't know.  Void Linux is not derived from any other distro, and so goes back to the originating sources [X.org?].   I will have to ask the Void people if anyone has used "seatd";  they tend to like display managers instead like "lightdm".

update:  I see Void has Runit "sv" services configured so that I can "just" enable the "seatd" service.   I still don't understand how seatd will find out that startx needs it.  All will be revealed?

Last edited by jacksprat (2024-05-02 10:03:54)