Arch Linux

kovac

Member

Registered: 2020-03-14

Posts: 41

[SOLVED] i3-gaps is not adding gaps

Hi guys,

When I was installing Arch Linux, I installed i3-gaps (I'm using a ThinkPad X250). The GUI related packages I installed are:

pacman -S rxvt-unicode
pacman -S mesa xorg-server xinit
pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter
pacman -S i3-gaps i3blocks i3lock i3status compton

Then I enabled lightdm:

systemctl enable lightdm

After successfully booting into Arch Linux, I can open terminals using mod + enter. (I did not do anything like startx in tty to start i3 - it seemed to be started on logon). I'm trying to add gaps to my windows, and what I have done so far:

cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc

Initially xinitrc had the following lines towards the end of the file:

twm &
xclock --geometry 50x50-1+1 &
xterm --geometry 80x50+494+51 &
xterm --geometry 80x20+494-0 &
exec xterm --geometry 80x66+0+0 --name login

I replaced above 5 lines in the file I copied to with:

exec i3

Then I copied the i3 config like:

cp /etc/i3/config ~/.i3/config

And added the following configuration to my new copy (right after the comments # Start i3bar to display a workspace bar (plus the system information i3status finds out, if available)):

for_window [class=".*"] border pixel 0
gaps inner 10
gaps outer 10

After this I tried doing mod + R, mod + E and even tried doing a reboot but when I add multiple terminals, I do not see any gaps between the windows (neither outer nor inner). I saw this similar question https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=251425 which he fixes by installing i3-gaps using source. I'm trying to figure out why the method I'm following which is recommended in both Arch Linux guide and i3-gaps GitHub page is not working. I will try to build from source if there's really no other way. But I would like to troubleshoot and find a solution within my current setup if possible. Thank you very much for your help!

Last edited by kovac (2020-03-18 15:25:36)

kovac

Member

Registered: 2020-03-14

Posts: 41

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps is not adding gaps

Okay, so I ,managed to figure this one out. It turns out that I had a ~/.i3/config as well as a ~/.config/i3/config. The latter, I'm quite certain that I did not create myself. So, I guess that the pacman -S installation automatically created this configuration file. So, i3wm was using this latter configuration file rather than the one I created at ~/.i3/config. I just deleted this with rm -r ~/.i3 and moved my configuration to ~/.config/i3/config. This way you do not need to build i3-gaps from source.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,701

Re: [SOLVED] i3-gaps is not adding gaps

The latter, I'm quite certain that I did not create myself. So, I guess that the pacman -S installation automatically created this configuration file. .

I doubt it.  Not from an Arch Linux package..

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