Arch Linux

Garfa

Member

Registered: 2021-05-15

Posts: 7

[SOLVED] Rootless X -- wiki suggests 'startx' instead of 'exec startx'

Just below 'Using xinitrc' on https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg#Rootless_Xorg it says 'run startx directly and do not use exec startx'.
You'd still be running X as non-root with exec though, so what good would running 'startx' instead of 'exec startx' do?

Last edited by Garfa (2021-05-19 17:44:05)

tucuxi

Member

From: Switzerland

Registered: 2020-03-08

Posts: 291

Re: [SOLVED] Rootless X -- wiki suggests 'startx' instead of 'exec startx'

Thanks for this question. It triggered me to change  'exec startx' to 'startx'. So far I haven't seen any advantages nor disadvantages, but I'll follow this thread to learn more.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,361

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Rootless X -- wiki suggests 'startx' instead of 'exec startx'

Not only does much of that section (added last April) looks incorrect, but it's also out of place.  Even if one needed to avoid exec (you don't need to avoid it, and probably should use it), then that information should be in the start/xinit page, not the Xorg page.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

Garfa

Member

Registered: 2021-05-15

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Rootless X -- wiki suggests 'startx' instead of 'exec startx'

Thanks for clearing that up. I've mostly used Debian before, and was quite surprised that after following the guide(s) carefully, killing X would take me to Linux console in a logged in session. xD

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,361

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Rootless X -- wiki suggests 'startx' instead of 'exec startx'

... killing X would take me to Linux console in a logged in session. xD

Without `exec` that's the expected outcome as the initial shell session is still lingering in the background while X is running.  Avoiding leaving this lingering shell around is the purpose of the `exec`.  But whether you use `exec startx` or just `startx` has absolutely no relevance at all on running Xorg as 'rootless'.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

Garfa

Member

Registered: 2021-05-15

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Rootless X -- wiki suggests 'startx' instead of 'exec startx'

Great, that was the only lingering question mark for me after finishing https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Genera … mendations