Arch Linux

L_and_P21

Member

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 8

Bar for bspwm not working

so i am trying to get bar for bspwm to work. i have read forums, the guide for dummies, and even some other guides on how to get it to work. right now i feel i have come the closest to getting it to work because as i type startx i get into bspwm but when i open a terminal x closes and there is an error reading something about "panel". before this i would get nothing.

my .xinitrc (panel commented to not close x on terminal startup) :

sxhkd &
# panel &
exec bspwm

my /etc/profile for the default path

# Set our default path
PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:~/Scripts"
export PANEL_FIFO="/tmp/panel-fifo"
export PATH

i have also chmod-ed everything that i was told to in the guides. Here is the last guide that i followed.

i have no doubt that i either read something wrong or just forgot something. any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks.

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

What is panel?  Is it in your $PATH?  If you followed this guide, are you therefore not using the AUR packages and throwing untracked files all over your system?

L_and_P21

Member

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 8

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

the files that i downloaded first were the *-git files from aur. from that point i followed the guides. would it be best to remove all bspwm files and start over?

ANOKNUSA

Member

Registered: 2010-10-22

Posts: 2,141

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

I'm guessing WonderWoofy's confusion stems from you saying "the guides," without actually saying anything about what you did or how you did it. There's the Arch wiki page on bspwm, the official bspwm GitHub wiki, that blog post you linked to, some page called "bspwm for dummies" (which, last I checked, used outdated syntax) ... If you tried following all of them, then the problem could have arisen while following any one of them. Also, your title explicitly says that getting the statusbar working is the problem, yet your original post says that X crashes with some error---which means that nothing is working.

I'd say yes, start over. Start by building and installing bspwm, adding appropriate entires in ~/.xinitrc and configuring your keybindings. Worry about the statusline afterward.

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Linux != Windows  ::  Ask Questions the Smart Way  ::  Configs

L_and_P21

Member

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 8

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

ok i will start over and follow the wiki.

L_and_P21

Member

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 8

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

so i have gone through and removed all that i had downloaded, installed and unedited what i had edited. i then downloaded bspwm and sxhkd from aur and installed them. bspwm works. then i installed bar and dzen2 and put line "panel &" in the bspwmrc like the wiki told me to, that didnt work. i then tried "panel dzen2 &", same thing. am i forgetting something?

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

Again, is panel in your $PATH?

L_and_P21

Member

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 8

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

am i missing where is shows when to put panel in the path? i thought it was before. but since i have redone everything i guess it is no longer there.

Last edited by L_and_P21 (2014-06-08 19:02:16)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

Okay... do you know what the PATH variable is?  If panel is not within a directory that is included in this variable, you will have to give it the full path to that script. 

If you don't know what the PATH variable is, I would recommend against using bspwm.  Most of its configuration is based on basic bash scripts.  So if you don't understand any of that, you are going to have one hell of a time figuring anything out.

L_and_P21

Member

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 8

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

so i did a little reading up on PATH. from what i understand, it is a location that the terminal searches in after i give a command. so based on that if i have a file "panel" located in the directory "~/.config/bspwm/panel/", when X starts up i want it to access this file i want to put that directory in my PATH, i.e.

export PATH=$PATH:~/.config/bspwm/panel/

in the file ~/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc i have the line

panel &

which links to the PATH

is this correct or am i still missing something?

ANOKNUSA

Member

Registered: 2010-10-22

Posts: 2,141

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

$PATH is the directory where the shell searches for commands. It consists of all (or most) directories that have executable files in them. This includes all directories where executables are installed by the package manager, and any extra directories added by a user in that user's shell configuration. So if "panel" is a script, that script needs to be executable and somehow needs to be called during the X start-up process. Many users have a directory in their home directory where they keep personal scripts, which they add to $PATH, and many users of tiling window managers keep their status scripts there.

---

Linux != Windows  ::  Ask Questions the Smart Way  ::  Configs

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

If it is not in your $PATH though, you can simply use the full path to the script.

L_and_P21

Member

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 8

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

thank you for the replies. my time to try and get this to work has passed, tried to do it over the weekend. i have decided to admit defeat, for now, and just use lxde. thank you for your help. i will look into this in the future when i get more time.

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Bar for bspwm not working

If you want an easier entry into the world of tiling window managers, I suggest giving i3 a try.  It has simple sane configuration and a built in bar.  After trying several other tiling window managers, it is what I have ended up using.