If by design, I think the doco should make this clear - as you imply bogomipz.
]]>This has come up before when GDM has been started from inittab. Maybe Arch should discourage use of runlevel 5, and encourage use of /etc/rc.d/xdm and the like?
]]>Anyway, I tried patrix's suggestion of specifying it in .xsession, and it worked.
Definitely something odd there, but at least it's working. Time to see about that bug report.........
]]>From memory xdm for some reason doesn't run the /etc/profile file which sets up your xfce4 paths. Or something like that, I'm not in linux right now so I can't check. There is a thread about this though.
Originally I thought it was just me with this but as it clearly isn't a bug should probably be raised.
]]>is .xsession executable?
Are the xfce4 commands in the path? Maybe xdm doesn't have the same $PATH as you have when you log in console then startx. If that's the case, try adding this at the top of your .xsession:
PATH=$PATH:/path/to/xfce4/bin
(a simple "which xfce4-whatever" in the console should tell you where they are)
If those 2 are not it, then... someone else will know I'm sure
]]>But nothing happens. I put my username and password into xdm, the screen goes blank for a few seconds - and then xdm comes back up. No xfce4.
.xsession-errors says "command not found" for all the xfce4 startup commands.
Any ideas, anyone?
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