This is my attempt at getting Xorg to run as a user service, mostly following what I've found here and here.
At this point, I can get the Xorg server to start, and apparently start things like sxhkd and bspwm, but it doesn't seem to work how it would if I use the startx route that I am trying to move away from.
$ Xorg -version
X.Org X Server 1.20.9
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: 5.8.7-200.fc32.x86_64
Current Operating System: Linux thiccpad 5.8.18-200.fc32.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Nov 2 19:49:11 UTC 2020 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=(hd0,gpt2)/vmlinuz-5.8.18-200.fc32.x86_64 root=/dev/mapper/fedora-root ro resume=/dev/mapper/fedora-swap rd.lvm.lv=fedora/root
rd.lvm.lv=fedora/swap quiet loglevel=3 nouveau.modeset=0 rd.plymouth=0 plymouth.enable=0
Build Date: 08 October 2020 12:00:00AM
Build ID: xorg-x11-server 1.20.9-1.fc32
Current version of pixman: 0.40.0
Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
$ bspwm -version
0.9.9
$ sxhkd -version
0.6.1
$ systemctl --version
systemd 245 (v245.8-2.fc32)
+PAM +AUDIT +SELINUX +IMA -APPARMOR +SMACK +SYSVINIT +UTMP +LIBCRYPTSETUP +GCRYPT +GNUTLS +ACL +XZ +LZ4 +SECCOMP +BLKID +ELFUTILS +KMOD +IDN2 -IDN +PCRE2 defau
lt-hierarchy=unified
$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="32 (Thirty Two)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=32
VERSION_CODENAME=""
PLATFORM_ID="platform:f32"
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 32 (Thirty Two)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
LOGO=fedora-logo-icon
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:32"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f32/system-administrators-guide/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=32
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=32
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy"
- Set
Xwrapperconfiguration:
$ cat /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
allowed_users=anybody
needs_root_rights=yes
- Setup various
systemdunits, see the files listed in the repository here. - Enable units:
$ command -v scu
alias scu='systemctl --user'
$ scu enable xorg@0.socket
$ scu enable bspwm.service
$ scu enable sxhkd.service
$ scu enable feh.service
$ which bspwm sxhkd feh
/usr/bin/bspwm
/usr/bin/sxhkd
/usr/bin/feh
$ scu list-unit-files
UNIT FILE STATE VENDOR PRESET
at-spi-dbus-bus.service static disabled
dbus-broker.service enabled enabled
dbus-daemon.service disabled disabled
dbus.service enabled disabled
dirmngr.service static disabled
flatpak-oci-authenticator.service static disabled
flatpak-portal.service static disabled
flatpak-session-helper.service static disabled
glib-pacrunner.service static disabled
gpg-agent.service static disabled
grub-boot-success.service static disabled
p11-kit-client.service disabled disabled
p11-kit-server.service disabled disabled
pipewire.service disabled disabled
pulseaudio.service disabled disabled
run-r91d23f7d96fc4f6f9da6055bd8b3b364.service transient disabled
sxhkd.service enabled disabled
systemd-exit.service static disabled
systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service static disabled
systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service disabled enabled
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service static disabled
xdg-desktop-portal.service static disabled
xdg-document-portal.service static disabled
xdg-permission-store.service static disabled
dbus.socket enabled enabled
dirmngr.socket disabled disabled
gpg-agent-browser.socket disabled disabled
gpg-agent-extra.socket disabled disabled
gpg-agent-ssh.socket disabled disabled
gpg-agent.socket disabled disabled
p11-kit-server.socket disabled disabled
pipewire.socket enabled enabled
pulseaudio.socket enabled enabled
basic.target static disabled
bluetooth.target static disabled
default.target static disabled
exit.target static disabled
graphical-session-pre.target static disabled
graphical-session.target static disabled
paths.target static disabled
printer.target static disabled
shutdown.target static disabled
smartcard.target static disabled
sockets.target static disabled
sound.target static disabled
timers.target static disabled
grub-boot-success.timer static enabled
systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer disabled enabled
- Reboot the system:
$ reboot
At this point, I am greeted with a blank screen, with seemingly nothing being functional. Switching to tty2, I can look at the state of the system, where I do not see any bspwm_0_0-socket file, indicating that bspwm has actually started. However, I can run:
ps aux | grep -iE "bspwm|sxhkd"
and note that they are both indeed running.
The journal shows a similar conclusion, as seen in boot.log, roughly here.
Looking at the journal with:
journalctl -b -1 | grep -iE "(xorg.*(\(WW\)|\(EE\)))|(dbus)"
I can see that there are some warnings:
Jan 03 14:28:14 thiccpad Xorg[1778]: (WW) xf86OpenConsole: setpgid failed: Operation not permitted
Jan 03 14:28:14 thiccpad Xorg[1778]: (WW) xf86OpenConsole: setsid failed: Operation not permitted
Jan 03 14:28:14 thiccpad Xorg[1778]: (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
but I've not got much idea what to make of these. Googling leads to here, but as far as I understand, the entire point is to run Xorg as a user? So why would:
I fixed the problem xf86OpenConsole: setpgid failed: Operation not permitted by starting serverX with root privilege.
be involved here? From this section, I noticed that these warnings are not present in a successful boot. This seems to be the problem, but I'm not entirely sure what I can do about it. Presumably this is why the Xwrapper configuration is needed, but seeing as that is done, I'm not sure where else to look.
A little bit more research here notes something about modeset, so looking at my own /etc/default/grub:
$ cat /etc/default/grub
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet loglevel=3 nouveau.modeset=0 rd.plymouth=0 plymouth.enable=0"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="resume=/dev/mapper/fedora-swap rd.lvm.lv=fedora/root rd.lvm.lv=fedora/swap"
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=true
I do have nouveau.modeset=0 (not entirely sure why), but I would imagine is unrelated, especially as I can get a normal startup via startx. Not really sure here though, hence why I'm looking again for help.
Also via here, it looks like the settings of allowed_users=anybody and needs_root_rights=yes are exactly what would help this? Might they not be working for some reason? The wrapper looks like:
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 44 Jan 2 10:08 /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
I see various things in the journal mentioning freedesktop.problems@0.service, however, I see the same thing when I go the startx route:
Jan 03 14:44:11 thiccpad systemd[1]: Created slice system-dbus\x2d:1.4\x2dorg.freedesktop.problems.slice.
Jan 03 14:44:11 thiccpad systemd[1]: Started dbus-:1.4-org.freedesktop.problems@0.service.
which does start bspwm, etc. successfully. This is done via setting up my ~/.bash_profile like so:
$ cat ~/.bash_profile
[ "$(tty)" = /dev/tty1 ] && exec startx -- vt1 &> /dev/null
and like I said, works just fine, but is beside the point here.
Looking at the provided startx script in /usr/bin/startx, there are places where it does:
...
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
unset SESSION_MANAGER
...
so I've done similar in my ~/.bash_profile:
export DISPLAY=0
export XAUTHORITY="$HOME/.Xauthority"
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
unset SESSION_MANAGER
systemctl --user import-environment DISPLAY XAUTHORITY PATH DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS SESSION_MANAGER
systemctl --user set-environment XDG_VTNR=1
but again, no success there.
Here I say "successful" as this is not what I'm trying to do, but as you'd expect, it works. I mentioned before that for the successful method, I simply do:
$ cat ~/.bash_profile
[ "$(tty)" = /dev/tty1 ] && exec startx -- vt1 &> /dev/null
and all is fine and dandy. These logs are taken from /var/log/Xorg.0.log found via:
$ sudo updatedb && locate Xorg.0.log
and can be found here. These are notably missing the WARNING level logs noted in this section which are not present in the successful logs. So, if I need to run as root to circumvent this, how do I run Xorg as a user service? Presumably this is why the Xwrapper configuration is needed, but seeing as that is done, I'm not sure where else to look.
The journal also shows the following at INFO level, so I presume it isn't important:
Jan 03 14:36:58 thiccpad Xorg[1829]: (II) systemd-logind: logind integration requires -keeptty and -keeptty was not provided, disabling logind integration
but I'm not really sure.