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HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

Ran into something this afternoon i thought strange, it probably because im missing something or other.
On beowulf using sysvinit, dbus disabled i installed xdm , rebooted and xdm failed to source .profile.
I have .xinitrc softlinked to .xsession

Should i be using .xprofile instead? <-- tried this, did not work copying over contents of .profile to .xprofile, not having .profile sourced means it loses some of my $PATH setup there.

In the meantime i found a decent fix whereby i just add in a file to  /etc/X11/Xsession.d/75local-profile

# Source a users .profile, etc
PROFILES="/etc/profile $HOME/.profile /etc/xprofile $HOME/.xprofile"

for PROFILE in $PROFILES ; do
  [ -f "$PROFILE" ] && . "$PROFILE"
done

/bin/true

credit to https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/20 … 02457.html

Regards.

Last edited by HevyDevy (2020-06-14 10:12:10)

Head_on_a_Stick

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From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

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Re: xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

If you place a file at ~/.xsessionrc it will be read by any and all display managers (and also the startx command) without any need for special hacks.

https://wiki.debian.org/Xsession

And you should use ~/.xsession instead of ~/.xinitrc (rather than as well as), at least according to the startx man page.

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

ok Hoas, on your advice i have removed .xinitrc and .xsession (not your advice on removing those files but if just using .xsessionrc they should not be needed right?)

I only have .xsessionrc and in that file is

exec dwm

.profile is still not sourced so lets add in what it says in regards to Xsession

https://wiki.debian.org/Xsession

You may dot in some other POSIX shell configuration file: if [ -r ~/.profile ]; then . ~/.profile; fi

nope .profile is still not being sourced.

Head_on_a_Stick

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From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

Oh really? In which case sorry for the misinformation. I've never actually tried xdm.

EDIT: hold on, did you source ~/.profile before the exec dwm line? Nothing in that file will be read after an exec statement.

And ~/.xsessionrc isn't really intended as a replacement for ~/.xsession, it is an adjunct to that file.

Devuan's display managers should automatically start whatever is set as the x-session-manager alternative with no need for further configuration, or /etc/alternatives/x-window-manager otherwise.

How did you install dwm? Is it the Devuan package or did you compile it yourself?

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2020-06-14 13:02:42)

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

yes i did source before exec dwm.

if    [ -r ~/.profile ]; then
        . ~/.profile; 
fi

exec dwm

dwm is from suckless.org so, built from source.

There is definetly something im missing here, if i go back to startx and remove xdm .profile is sourced again.

Last edited by HevyDevy (2020-06-14 13:09:17)

Head_on_a_Stick

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From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

What about if you have ~/.xsession with just exec dwm and then add ~/.xsessionrc to source ~/.profile?

You probably shouldn't use xdm any way because it will run X under the root user. The startx command runs X under your normal user, which is much better.

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

What about if you have ~/.xsession with just exec dwm and then add ~/.xsessionrc to source ~/.profile?

You probably shouldn't use xdm any way because it will run X under the root user. The startx command runs X under your normal user, which is much better.

Can confirm that having ~/.xsession with just exec dwm and ~/.xsessionrc sourcing ~/.profile is the solution.

I prefer startx but even that i believe needs root rights as i have to install xserver-xorg-legacy and the modify  /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
to have..
needs_root_rights=yes

I was just interested to use xdm as it seems like the only display manager that does not need dbus as a dependency.

Anyhow thanks.

EDIT: correction looks like lxdm doesnt need dbus either.

Last edited by HevyDevy (2020-06-15 09:09:01)

Head_on_a_Stick

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From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

I believe needs root rights as i have to install xserver-xorg-legacy and the modify  /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
to have..
needs_root_rights=yes

Nope.

Devuan beowulf can now run rootless X OOTB (as long as the startx command is used) thanks to elogind

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: xdm - X Display Manager (on beowulf system with no dbus operational)

I believe needs root rights as i have to install xserver-xorg-legacy and the modify  /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
to have..
needs_root_rights=yes

Nope.

Devuan beowulf can now run rootless X OOTB (as long as the startx command is used) thanks to elogind

That may be true if using elogind but elogind depends on dbus and as i dont have dbus enabled and i have it pinned i have to use xserver-xorg-legacy. Thems the disadvantage of not using dbus i suppose.