Autologin to graphical app (emulationstation) not working

Sydius · 2019-01-21 17:14:05

I added to the bottom of my .bash_profile a single command to start a graphical app: emulationstation. This does what I want and, if I log in to this account, it starts automatically.

I then set up autologin per the wiki and that also works: when I turn on the computer, it automatically logs in to that account. The problem is that the program, when it starts, immediately fails to initialize its graphics subsystem claiming that /dev/dri is unavailable. This app uses SDL if that makes a difference and fails during SDL_Init. If I add a "sleep 2" to my .bash_profile right before I start the app, though, it works every time.

This implies to me that I need have agetty wait until something has finished initializing, but I don't know what or how to make it wait for it. I tried adding "Type=idle" to the getty override file as well as "Type=simple" but that didn't make a difference.

How might I debug this further?

Lone_Wolf · 2019-01-22 14:35:23

Are you booting to graphical.target or multi-user.target ?

$ systemctl get-default

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2019-01-22 14:35:36)

Sydius · 2019-01-29 06:21:37

I'm booting to the graphical target. The fact that adding a small sleep fixes it makes me think that getty is still running too early for some reason.

Lone_Wolf · 2019-01-29 10:17:23

for some reason

Graphical Target stops when X has started, multi-user stops when console login is reached.
The getty "Automatic login to virtual console" method is intended to work with multi-user target , not graphical target.

There is however a clean solution to combine getty autologin with X applications :

Boot to multi-user target
getty performs autologin to a virtual console
xinit / startx are run automatically and initialise the graphical environment
xinitrc is used to start the application .

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xinit

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2019-01-29 10:19:45)

Arch Linux

#1 2019-01-21 17:14:05

Autologin to graphical app (emulationstation) not working

#2 2019-01-22 14:35:23

Re: Autologin to graphical app (emulationstation) not working

#3 2019-01-29 06:21:37

Re: Autologin to graphical app (emulationstation) not working

#4 2019-01-29 10:17:23

Re: Autologin to graphical app (emulationstation) not working

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