Arch Linux

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

[SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Hello, this is my first post in the Arch Forums. I'm a long-time debian user, but I decided to switch to arch to have a system that has less programs installed, and to have i3-gaps (since it just isn't a very convenient process to install on debian). After installing gaps (I installed that specifically instead of installing that on top of the i3-wm package), I copied the config file from /etc/i3/config to ~/.i3/config as instructed and I also added three lines that (should) enable the gaps. These are:

for_window [class=".*"] border pixel 0
gaps inner 30
gaps outer 30

After repeatedly refreshing i3 by hitting Win+Shift+R and rebooting several times, I still don't have gaps. It just looks like the default i3 I ran on Debian. In case you guys are wondering what my full i3 config looks like, it looks exactly like the default that is created the first time i3 runs with the addition of the 3 lines I pasted above. I looked in the forums to find a solution, but I did not find one. I also apologize if this isn't the proper subforum to post this in. I'd really appreciate the help.

Last edited by Cartesius (2019-12-17 01:51:09)

Zod

Member

From: Hoosiertucky

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 636

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Your config should be in ~/.config/i3

And crank your gap setting down to 5.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/I3

Edit: And set border pixel to 2

Last edited by Zod (2019-12-16 02:46:10)

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Your config should be in ~/.config/i3

And crank your gap setting down to 5.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/I3

Edit: And set border pixel to 2

First and foremost, thank you for your prompt response! Okay, I’ve edited the config in ~/.config/i3/config to include the lines I mentioned in OP, lowered the gaps to 5, and set border pixel to 2. After that, I refreshed i3, and even exited, but I still see no changes.

Last edited by Cartesius (2019-12-16 03:07:37)

Zod

Member

From: Hoosiertucky

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 636

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Just to be sure..

you have the config file sitting in

~/.config/i3       ?

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Just to be sure..

you have the config file sitting in

~/.config/i3       ?

I sure do.
“ls -la ~/.config/i3/“ returns: ., .., and config

Last edited by Cartesius (2019-12-16 03:10:09)

Zod

Member

From: Hoosiertucky

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 636

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

How are you starting i3?

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

How are you starting i3?

Simply by running “startx” since I disabled xorg-twm, xclock, and stuff like that.

Zod

Member

From: Hoosiertucky

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 636

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Is this what you installed?

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/comm … 4/i3-gaps/

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

That should be the one. I installed it by running "pacman -S i3-gaps".
Should I have done "pacman -S i3" instead and simply chosen the first option?

Zod

Member

From: Hoosiertucky

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 636

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

After you start i3, are you opening a number of windows..say 4 terminals?

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

I am, because I want to make sure if the gaps are there or not.

Zod

Member

From: Hoosiertucky

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 636

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Welp, the only thing I can figure is i3 and not i3-gaps is installed.

Here is the upstream for it.

https://github.com/Airblader/i3

There may be some documentation there that can help.

Last edited by Zod (2019-12-16 03:33:30)

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Welp, the only thing I can figure is i3 and not i3-gaps is installed.

Here is the upstream for it.

https://github.com/Airblader/i3

There may be some documentation there that can help.

Would it be recommended to remove the current package, install the regular i3-wm, then install gaps from source?

Zod

Member

From: Hoosiertucky

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 636

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

If it were me, I would look in the pacman log to verify exactly what got installed and go from there.

i3-gaps is the package you want, it's what I'm using.

The lines you added lead me to believe somethings not right, the original config file should have shipped with the gap settings.

Edit: You should probably delete the config file and then restart i3, it should put you into the config wizard.

Last edited by Zod (2019-12-16 03:53:29)

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

If it were me, I would look in the pacman log to verify exactly what got installed and go from there.

i3-gaps is the package you want, it's what I'm using.

The lines you added lead me to believe somethings not right, the original config file should have shipped with the gap settings.

Edit: You should probably delete the config file and then restart i3, it should put you into the config wizard.

"i3 -v" shows a version of i3, but "i3-gaps -v" isn't found. Does this mean that i3-gaps is not installed even though I did "pacman -S i3-gaps"? If so, then what other options are available to install it?

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Please paste your full pacman.log

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Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Please paste your full pacman.log

Here it is. You will notice that I removed and reinstalled several times thinking that it would resolve the issue somehow.

Edit: For what it's worth, here's my current i3 config as well. I do notice that this config is different from the ones in the previous installs. The reason for this is likely to do with the fact that the latest install of gaps was performed using the AUR (by doing "yay -S i3-gaps"). I am not home right now, so I can't test the settings (I'm using ssh to retrieve these logs at work), but is this what my config ought to look like with gaps as opposed to the default i3?
When I do "yay -S i3-gaps" (to make sure I get a re-install message) it indicates that my version is currently 4.17.1-1 and that it is up to date.

Last edited by Cartesius (2019-12-16 19:35:29)

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

1. Stop using an AUR helper as your package manager: that is pacman's job.

2. This makes no sense:

[2019-12-15T17:03:58-0600] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S i3'
...
[2019-12-15T17:04:24-0600] [ALPM] installed i3-gaps (4.17.1-1)

Please paste your pacman.conf

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Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

1. Stop using an AUR helper as your package manager: that is pacman's job.

2. This makes no sense:

[2019-12-15T17:03:58-0600] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S i3'
...
[2019-12-15T17:04:24-0600] [ALPM] installed i3-gaps (4.17.1-1)

Please paste your pacman.conf

If you re-read my posts, you will know that I did not use an AUR helper until this last install because the previous i3-gaps installs from pacman were behaving exactly like the default i3. As far as the lines you quoted, they make total sense because when you run "pacman -S i3" you get three options, the first of which is i3-gaps. So yes, after running that command it would make sense that it would result in "installed i3-gaps".
This is what my pacman.conf file looks like.

Last edited by Cartesius (2019-12-16 19:20:21)

CarbonChauvinist

Member

Registered: 2012-06-16

Posts: 413

Website

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Why are you running so much `pacman -Rdd foo`? This is probably not what you're actually looking to do - more than likely what you're looking for is `pacman -Rs' or `pacman -Rss` or `pacman -Rns` or `pacman -Rnss` depending. Unless there's a very specific reason, you really don't want to be skipping dependency checks IMO.

With that out of the way I'd follow Zod's reccs - remove the config you've edited and start from the default config that comes with the i3-gaps package and take it from there to troubleshoot.

Last edited by CarbonChauvinist (2019-12-16 20:19:48)

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Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Why are you running so much `pacman -Rdd foo`? This is probably not what you're actually looking to do - more than likely what you're looking for is `pacman -Rs' or `pacman -Rss` or `pacman -Rns` or `pacman -Rnss` depending. Unless there's a very specific reason, you really don't want to be skipping dependency checks IMO.

With that out of the way I'd follow Zod's reccs - remove the config you've edited and start from the default config that comes with the i3-gaps package and take it from there to troubleshoot.

I'm new to pacman, since I'm used to apt. My understanding was that -Rdd was the equivalent of the --purge option on apt-get remove. This seems to not be the case at all. I will try to remove gaps once again, delete the config, install directly from pacman, and try this out again. I will point out that I doubt this will work since this is exactly what I did the very first time I tried installing it. I simply logged in to arch, installed xorg, then installed i3-gaps, edited the xinitrc to disable xorg-twm, xclock, etc. Once that didn't work I reinstalled through pacman by doing

pacman -S i3-gaps

as well as

pacman -S i3

using the first option for gaps. Then finally, I tried removing it again and installing from the AUR.

Last edited by Cartesius (2019-12-16 19:56:26)

Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

I just removed i3-gaps, then reinstalled by running

pacman -S i3-gaps

and the config file looks exactly like the default i3 config.

i3 -v

returns: "i3 version 4.17.1 (2019-08-30) 2009 Michael Stapelberg and contributors". At the same time, pacman indicates that i3-gaps is the package that was installed.
What could the issue be?
Edit: I was eventually able to get everything running properly after following this guide. I guess I assumed gaps could be installed straight from pacman.

Last edited by Cartesius (2019-12-17 01:50:36)

merlock

Member

Registered: 2018-10-30

Posts: 262

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

i3-gaps was installed.

Note: i3-wm conflicts with i3-gaps and by default i3-gaps (a fork of i3 with gaps and other features) will be installed.

From my system:

pacman -Ss i3-wm
community/i3-gaps 4.17.1-1 (i3) [installed]
    A fork of i3wm tiling window manager with more features, including gaps
community/i3-wm 4.17.1-1 (i3)
    An improved dynamic tiling window manager

i3 -v
i3 version 4.17.1 (2019-08-30) © 2009 Michael Stapelberg and contributors

I was eventually able to get everything running properly after following this guide

Any particular reason you didn't follow ArchWiki, or Airblader's wiki?

Last edited by merlock (2019-12-17 03:25:18)

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Cartesius

Member

Registered: 2019-12-16

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

i3-gaps was installed.

Note: i3-wm conflicts with i3-gaps and by default i3-gaps (a fork of i3 with gaps and other features) will be installed.

From my system:

pacman -Ss i3-wm
community/i3-gaps 4.17.1-1 (i3) [installed]
    A fork of i3wm tiling window manager with more features, including gaps
community/i3-wm 4.17.1-1 (i3)
    An improved dynamic tiling window manager

i3 -v
i3 version 4.17.1 (2019-08-30) © 2009 Michael Stapelberg and contributors

I was eventually able to get everything running properly after following this guide

Any particular reason you didn't follow ArchWiki, or Airblader's wiki?

Those instructions did not result in gaps of any sort, unfortunately, but the instructions on the link I posted worked just fine.

kovac

Member

Registered: 2020-03-14

Posts: 41

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps not enabling gaps on fresh Arch install

Worth checking my answer at https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=253715. This may be the same cause of your issue.