X startup script trouble

davidac · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2003 Posts: 27

hi all

does anyone know whether gentoo supports any standard user login scripts for X, something like the .bashrc file is for bash. I would have thought that what I wanted was the .xsession file - but after testing it, and then looking through all the X startup scripts, this is only looked at if you dont use the gentoo 'chooser.sh' scripts. in fact, as far as i can see there are no provided user startup scripts.

basically i'm asking if anyone has found anything to the contrary, cause that would make me very happy :lol:

thanks

david ac

ralph · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: Hamburg

.xinitrc if you start with startx, .xsession if you use a log-in manager (like kdm,gdm).

toskala · Posted: Sun May 18, 2003 2:13 pm Post subject:

what the heck is chooser.sh?
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davidac · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2003 Posts: 27

chooser.sh is found in the /etc/X11 directory.

when gentoo boots up it doesnt actually use either the startx script of the xinit script. if you don't believe me, check out your /etc/init.d/xdm script. it goes straight to whatever your loging manager is - i.e. kdm/gdm/xdm etc.

i think that these scripts in turn use the chooser.sh file - although i'm not sure.

Quite clearly though, these programs get info from the /etc/X11/Sessions/ directory, which i dont believe is a standard directory - implying some gentoo modifications of the official source.

looking through the scripts from chooser.sh onwards, it seems to me as if .xsession etc. are never called

somehow this does not seem to be something which i would consider a good thing!

toskala · Posted: Sun May 18, 2003 2:34 pm Post subject:

i never used a graphical login manager, but afaik /etc/rc.conf contains all you need to change whatever you want to use as graphical login manager.

but i would strongly suggest you, reading the documentation, this is what helped me out.
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ralph · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: Hamburg

though i dont use a graphical login-manager im sure .xsession is used. just try it and u will see.

davidac · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2003 Posts: 27

/etc/rc.conf only contains info about which login manager to use. any way, i'm looking for a script which can load things based on which user is logging in (like what the ~/.bashrc does when you load up bash).

i've already looked through the docs and unfortunately they dont shed n e light on the problem :-(

also, i have tried creating a .xsession file with the following content

export TEST="hello"

and when i do an "export | grep -i test" on a loaded xterm - it is quite clear that there is no environement variable TEST, as there would be if .xsession was executed!

ralph · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: Hamburg

i think i found it.the startscripts are in /etc/X11/Session and you have to tell X wich session to usr in your rc.conf!

ralph · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: Hamburg

just took a look at my /etc/rc.conf:

toskala · Posted: Sun May 18, 2003 4:02 pm Post subject:

why dont you simply believe the first post of ralph?
~/.xinitrc does exactly the thing you want to have, why dont you use it?
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curtis119 · Posted: Sun May 18, 2003 5:37 pm Post subject:

ralph is correct the ~/.xinitrc file is correct if you are using startx to start your x session.

Here is mine, I use blackbox. The .xinitrc file starts all my dockapps and then blackbox.

davidac · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2003 Posts: 27

ok, none of u seem to know quite what i'm trying to do

however today i stumbled across someone who has the same problem as me, and as it turns out he has already posted this as a bug in bugzilla

see: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14872

ralph · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: Hamburg

davidac · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2003 Posts: 27

yeah, come to think of it, that would work - i think.

the problem though is that then the script is run for every user that logs in using that desktop environment. what i am looking for is a script that is run only for a specific user - like the .xession file would do if i was using startx.

considering such a thing doesnt exist however, i might try doing as u suggest - and maybe add in an if clause to exclude other users :-)

ralph · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: Hamburg

curtis119 · Posted: Mon May 19, 2003 3:06 pm Post subject:

ralph · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: Hamburg

but if you're usin startx anyway wouldnt it be much easier to simply set up a .xinitrc in your homedirectory.
i tested it and it works fine. :wink:

curtis119 · Posted: Mon May 19, 2003 4:42 pm Post subject:

Yes Ralph it does. I was using startx as an example because this is what I use. He wants to use xdm or whatever. This will work for him as well if he sets his mystart script to be the login manager and puts xdm as the last line in the script instead of using xdm as the login manager directly. Or kdm or gdm or whatever. I should have pointed this out but I thought he would understand. This is better than editing the /etc/X11/Sessions/Gnome script directly(as this will be overwritten ever time you upgrade).
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ralph · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 2001 Location: Hamburg

davidac · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2003 Posts: 27

yeah, that seems to work fine!!

until the maintainers fix it so that there are proper startup files, that's probably a good way to do it! my main worry was that if i editted the files, they would get replaced every upgrade - and this gets around that

thanks everyone for the useful advice :-)

david ac

grant.mcdorman · Posted: Tue May 20, 2003 6:07 pm Post subject: Per-user startup scripts