[SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 00:33:33

Hello people
First of all, I can't tell you how excited I am to actually try arch, I wanted this for a year now and finally decided to actually achieve it (and also got an extra hard drive).

I am a totally noob with arch, I have used Linux before but not in such depth, (I have used Ubuntu, Debian and fedora). I know basic commands and a scratch of how things work, but that's it. So to install arch I followed both the installation guide in the wiki and an installation guide from medium.com cause I have a dual boot windows system. After a long way, I tried to install the Nvidia drivers, xorg, xinit, openbox . I copied the xinitrc file in my folder, modified it to add the exec openbox-session line, put the # before xterm entries and then pressed startx. The service starts, my screen turns black for 1 or 2 seconds and then takes me back to the terminal screen. I rebooted because maybe it needed to configure some things out, but the same thing happened. After checking the log file in the var folder, there are no EE entries, only warnings, 2 of which seem to be non related to my problem (based on a lot of searches in the web The other warnings were about fonts, I installed the xorg fonts package and only 1 warning was left about fonts type 1. Running xset and xhost, which were solutions advice to others that had the same problem with me outputs that it's unable to open display. Openbox also fails to open display from environment. I am running the Linux kernel with the Nvidia package drivers. What could the problem be? Sorry for not putting any log files, but I don't know how to post them since I can't do anything on my arch in terminal (because I am a newbie), so if there is a way to post them, please let me know

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by luckris25 (2021-01-15 02:51:34)

loqs · 2021-01-08 00:39:26

See the tip box from List_of_applications#Pastebin_clients to pipe your logs from the console to a pastebin.
Please post both Xorg.log and .xinitrc contents and the output of dmesg.

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 01:33:48

loqs wrote:

See the tip box from List_of_applications#Pastebin_clients to pipe your logs from the console to a pastebin.
Please post both Xorg.log and .xinitrc contents and the output of dmesg.

Hello and thank you for answering
So:
Xorg log http://ix.io/2Len

Xinitrc http://ix.io/2Leo

Dmesg http://ix.io/2Leq

Hope this helps

Trilby · 2021-01-08 01:38:22

It looks like openbox is failing as X exits immediately without errors. Have you tested a simple client like just an xterm instead of openbox?

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 09:59:13

Trilby wrote:

It looks like openbox is failing as X exits immediately without errors. Have you tested a simple client like just an xterm instead of openbox?

First, thank you for answering
So I installed xterm, modified the xinitrc to uncomment the xterm entries and delete the openbox entry and ran startx. This works and I have 3 open terminals now in white colour while the rest of the screen is black ( I don't know if I should have expected 3 terminals, but at least it works. So why is openbox not opening? Should I remove it and reinstall it?

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 14:08:22

So while trying to experiment, I uninstalled and reinstalled openbox, which didn't fix the problem. Also whenever I hit startx, xterm now appears, because after running through my ~/.xinitrc it doesn't start anything, so it heads to the global file in the /etc folder. I ran "startx ~/.xinitrc" with my openbox xinitrc and the problem persists. So it's clearly an Openbox problem. Is there any solution for this? And is it possibly connected to the fact that both openbox and openbox-session output:

Openbox-Message: Failed to open the display from the DISPLAY environment variable.

seth · 2021-01-08 15:14:34

which didn't fix the problem

Unsurprisingly. This is a windows disease that will lead nowhere on a deterministic OS. Drop it.

Can you run "openbox-session" from the xterm? Or "openbox"? Do you get error messages?

Trilby · 2021-01-08 15:57:16

Also from the xterm, post the following:

ls -l ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.*.log
echo $DISPLAY

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 16:22:18

seth wrote:

which didn't fix the problem
Unsurprisingly. This is a windows disease that will lead nowhere on a deterministic OS. Drop it.
Can you run "openbox-session" from the xterm? Or "openbox"? Do you get error messages?

I did, I posted it on my previous reply, it says Openbox-Message: Failed to open the display from the DISPLAY environment variable.

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 16:23:16

Trilby wrote:

Also from the xterm, post the following:
ls -l ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.*.log
echo $DISPLAY

I will post it in about 3 hours, cause i don't have access to the pc right now

seth · 2021-01-08 16:34:20

That frankly sounded more like an attempt to launch openbox from a non-graphical session.
You probably mis-set the variable in some shell rc, but still post the required output.

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 19:43:48

seth wrote:

That frankly sounded more like an attempt to launch openbox from a non-graphical session.
You probably mis-set the variable in some shell rc, but still post the required output.

Oh, I am sorry, I misread that. So running it from xterm actually started openbox. So do I have to do this all the time? Cause I want to configure so that it automatically starts openbox when I login

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 19:48:38

Trilby wrote:

Also from the xterm, post the following:
ls -l ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.*.log
echo $DISPLAY

So I am home and I ran the commands, the first one says there is no such file or directory, the second one outputs

:0

seth · 2021-01-08 21:35:59

You perfectly can start openbox directly from xinitrc.
Start w/ not running "exec openbox-session" but just "exec openbox" (in case openbox-session somehow forks)

Trilby · 2021-01-08 21:39:31

Odd, it seems you are not running rootless, so that ls should be `ls -l /var/log/xorg/Xorg.*.log`

Basically I want to check whether the current (most recent / active) log has the same display number as the environment variable. If not, that would cause the symptoms you describe. Your previous xorg log was for DISPLAY=:1, but it's not clear what the current one is.

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 22:39:12

Trilby wrote:

Odd, it seems you are not running rootless, so that ls should be `ls -l /var/log/xorg/Xorg.*.log`
Basically I want to check whether the current (most recent / active) log has the same display number as the environment variable. If not, that would cause the symptoms you describe. Your previous xorg log was for DISPLAY=:1, but it's not clear what the current one is.

Running ls -l /var/log/xorg/Xorg.*.log outputs no such file or directory, because my xorg logs are in var/log. So running ls -l /var/log/Xorg.*.log outputs :

-rw-r--r-- 1 root lucas 30718 Jan 9 00:30 /var/log/Xorg.0.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root lucas 30718 Jan 8 03:17 /var/log/Xorg.1.log

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 22:41:42

seth wrote:

You perfectly can start openbox directly from xinitrc.
Start w/ not running "exec openbox-session" but just "exec openbox" (in case openbox-session somehow forks)

I have tried editing my xinitrc with openbox too, it does the same thing. However in xterm both openbox and openbox-session work. If I close xterm windows, openbox stops and I am taken back to the original non-graphical terminal. Ithink that with startx, openbox can't find the right display.

Last edited by luckris25 (2021-01-08 22:43:44)

seth · 2021-01-08 22:44:51

If the DISPLAY variable would be off, xterm would fail likewise.
Make the last call "openbox > /tmp/openbox.log 2>&1" and see whether it prints something informative there.

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 22:53:13

seth wrote:

If the DISPLAY variable would be off, xterm would fail likewise.
Make the last call "openbox > /tmp/openbox.log 2>&1" and see whether it prints something informative there.

Running it from the non graphical gui, the log outputs:

Openbox-Message: Failed to open the display from the Display environment variable

Running it from xterm doesn't output anything because as soon as I hit it it just waits for some actions of mine (I think?) so if I ctrl+c and nano the file, it's blank

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 22:57:21

Obconf also errors with :

Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused

(obconf:997): GTK-WARNING **: 00:54:28.666: cannot open display:

I don't know if that helps at all, but I thought I should post it

seth · 2021-01-08 22:59:08

You shall make that the last call in the xinitrc.

Running openbox in the non-GUI console will predictably fail. Always. Ever.

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 23:07:56

seth wrote:

You shall make that the last call in the xinitrc.
Running openbox in the non-GUI console will predictably fail. Always. Ever.

So I am literally going crazy right now
I added your line and both openbox and openbox session worked! I deleted it and they still work! What the hell is this sorcery????
I am rebooting right now to check if it keeps working!

luckris25 · 2021-01-08 23:11:54

So I have no idea how this happens but it actually works. The only minor problem is, I have to specify to startx to check the xinitrc file in my home directory. Startx opens xterm but startx ~/.xinitrc/xinitrc opens openbox. Can I fix this?

seth · 2021-01-08 23:43:47

~/.xinitrc - not ~/.xinitrc/xinitrc
You've been running the global /etc/xinitrc all the time…

luckris25 · 2021-01-09 04:59:16

seth wrote:

~/.xinitrc - not ~/.xinitrc/xinitrc
You've been running the global /etc/xinitrc all the time…

Actually this was a wiki problem. I had ran the cp command described in the xinit entry to make a xinit file in my home directory, but running it makes a file with the path ~/.xinitrc/xinitrc and not ~/.xinitrc . So I created a blank ~/.xinitrc file and then ran the cp command which seems to fix it. I don't know if this was the right way to do it all along, but even if it is it should be better described in the wiki. Anyway, sorry for wasting your time people, I am happy this was solved! Thanks for all your help!

Arch Linux

#1 2021-01-08 00:33:33

[SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#2 2021-01-08 00:39:26

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#3 2021-01-08 01:33:48

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#4 2021-01-08 01:38:22

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#5 2021-01-08 09:59:13

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#6 2021-01-08 14:08:22

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#7 2021-01-08 15:14:34

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#8 2021-01-08 15:57:16

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#9 2021-01-08 16:22:18

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#10 2021-01-08 16:23:16

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#11 2021-01-08 16:34:20

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#12 2021-01-08 19:43:48

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#13 2021-01-08 19:48:38

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#14 2021-01-08 21:35:59

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#15 2021-01-08 21:39:31

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#16 2021-01-08 22:39:12

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#17 2021-01-08 22:41:42

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#18 2021-01-08 22:44:51

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#19 2021-01-08 22:53:13

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#20 2021-01-08 22:57:21

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#21 2021-01-08 22:59:08

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#22 2021-01-08 23:07:56

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#23 2021-01-08 23:11:54

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#24 2021-01-08 23:43:47

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

#25 2021-01-09 04:59:16

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg-Openbox and possibly something else problem

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