Arch Linux

Apple

Member

Registered: 2013-03-30

Posts: 25

Xorg not working when I have a .xinitrc file [SOLVED-ish]

I've followed the beginners guide and most things are working well, apart from this.

If I try startx without a .xinitrc in my home folder I get a few terminals open and everything works well (it even seems to source my ~/.Xresources which was a nice surprise). But if I make a .xinitrc file things go wrong - If I have the line

 exec twm 

I get a black screen with no mouse or anything, if I have the line

 exec xterm 

I get an xterm, but the cursor shows it's not selected and I can't type anything in it.

I'm at a loss for where to look for the problem, as it seems so much like the NOTE in the Xorg wiki, apart from the fact that my .xinitrc isn't empty.

There're no errors in my Xorg log ( https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5604014 ) and my xinitrc - https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5604020 is the same (apart from the exec line) as one that works fine on my other arch install.

Thanks
Apple

Last edited by Apple (2013-05-18 17:12:58)

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Xorg not working when I have a .xinitrc file [SOLVED-ish]

Try a clean .xinitrc with just a wm/de exec line.

opt1mus

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2011-12-31

Posts: 212

Website

Re: Xorg not working when I have a .xinitrc file [SOLVED-ish]

Also: any particular reason why you have;

#!/bin/sh

Instead of;

#!/bin/bash

-- edited below --

Well, it appears to not make any odds, I see a mixture out there, including on the wiki.

Last edited by opt1mus (2013-05-18 14:52:33)

Apple

Member

Registered: 2013-03-30

Posts: 25

Re: Xorg not working when I have a .xinitrc file [SOLVED-ish]

After trying many other options, I've found everything seems to work as long as I don't only call twm or xterm. All of these options work:

exec awesome

exec dwm

twm &
xterm -geometry 80x40+0+0 &
exec xterm -geometry 80x50+400+0 -name login

While these two options don't:

exec twm

exec xterm

As I was never planning on just using twm, I guess that's not a problem for me, so I'll mark the thread as closed, though if anyone has an explanation I'll be grateful.

Thanks to x33a for the tip.

Last edited by Apple (2013-05-18 17:12:25)

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Xorg not working when I have a .xinitrc file [SOLVED-ish]

As I was never planning on just using twm, I guess that's not a problem for me, so I'll mark the thread as closed, though if anyone has an explanation I'll be grateful.

I have only tried twm once a few years back, and it was pretty unusable out of the box. Arch Wiki says it requires some configuring before being usable. Maybe that's the reason.

As for xterm, I just tried launching an xterm in a tty by itself, and I had somewhat of a similar experience as yours. The xterm window launched at the top left of the screen, and it had no focus. I had to hover the mouse cursor over it to give it focus.

Apple

Member

Registered: 2013-03-30

Posts: 25

Re: Xorg not working when I have a .xinitrc file [SOLVED-ish]

As I was never planning on just using twm, I guess that's not a problem for me, so I'll mark the thread as closed, though if anyone has an explanation I'll be grateful.

I have only tried twm once a few years back, and it was pretty unusable out of the box. Arch Wiki says it requires some configuring before being usable. Maybe that's the reason.

As for xterm, I just tried launching an xterm in a tty by itself, and I had somewhat of a similar experience as yours. The xterm window launched at the top left of the screen, and it had no focus. I had to hover the mouse cursor over it to give it focus.

The odd thing was that when I started twm with terminals open I had a mouse cursor, but without I didn't have a mouse cursor (or anything else), and there was no mouse cursor when I only called the xterm (unless I just couldn't see it, which is a possibility I guess). There were also sporadic issues killing the X server, where I lost input ability on the tty after pkill and couldn't switch with Alt+f#, but I didn't test the reproducability on that as I didn't like rebooting with the hardware power-off button every time.