Logging in remotely to Arch with Wayland and Sway from Windows

kurisusip · 2023-07-14 23:31:00

I've been working on this for the past few hours with not much progress. Reading things about X vs Wayland I decided to go with wayland for my DRM, and sorta threw my hat at a few DM's until I picked Sway. My end state is as above, accessing my Arch server via a Windows client, over SSH preferably as I have the key-based authentication set up with no passwords allowed for security reasons.

Current Issues:
1. I'm having trouble starting my Sway server, which may or may not be because I'm currently still accessing it via SSH in Windows CMD. Currently Sway returns

kurisu@archbox:~#sway
00:00:00.002 [wlr] [libseat] [libseat/backend/seatd.c:66] Could not connect to socket /run/seatd.sock: Permission denied
00:00:00.002 [wlr] [libseat] [libseat/libseat.c:79] No backend was able to open a seat
00:00:00.002 [wlr] [backend/session/session.c:83] Unable to create seat: Function not implemented
00:00:00.002 [wlr] [backend/session/session.c:248] Failed to load session backend
00:00:00.002 [wlr] [backend/backend.c:86] Failed to start a session
00:00:00.002 [wlr] [backend/backend.c:357] Failed to start a DRM session
00:00:00.002 [sway/server.c:73] Unable to create backend

I suspect I wont be able to see Sway via a terminal, but am I correct that once I get it working I can start it and still only see the tty, though sway is in fact running in the background?

2. Finding a solution to pass the session to Windows over SSH
I have freerdp and waypipe installed, but I fail to see anything online about how they will interact, or if they will at all, or if its redundant, or about using them to set up a remote session for a Window's host.
Am I at least on the right track with using one of those?
Or am I missing out on a DM compositor for Wayland that is designed to serve sessions to Windows?

Any advice or commentary is welcome, thank you.

kurisusip · 2023-07-14 23:47:21

Well, I at least found an answer finally to the second question, a general lack of knowledge is to blame there.

Trilby · 2023-07-15 00:00:51

1. Are you trying to run sway as root? That's a bad idea (and it may not even let you because it is a bad idea).
2. Is seatd running?
3. You realize the main difference between X11 and Wayland is that Wayland is not a network protocol - so there is no way to run a local display server with remote client programs in Wayland as you could under X11. You can set up RDP type connections ... specifically for sway, there is wayvnc.

And to one of your specific questions: even before setting up wayvnc, you definitely should be able to launch sway from the ssh session so long as there is a display connected to the sshd server (where sway will appear). On the client end you will still "see" the pty (not tty), but sway will not run in the background by default. That pty will be occupied by sway and you'll see sway's log output. Of course you could background sway just as you would background any other program (by ending with a '&' though you'd also likely want to use nohup and redirect stdout/stderr).

Last edited by Trilby (2023-07-15 00:04:12)

kurisusip · 2023-07-15 00:16:17

Trilby wrote:

1. Are you trying to run sway as root? That's a bad idea (and it may not even let you because it is a bad idea).
2. Is seatd running?
3. You realize the main difference between X11 and Wayland is that Wayland is not a network protocol - so there is no way to run a local display server with remote client programs in Wayland as you could under X11. You can set up RDP type connections ... specifically for sway, there is wayvnc.
And to one of your specific questions: even before setting up wayvnc, you definitely should be able to launch sway from the ssh session so long as there is a display connected to the sshd server (where sway will appear). On the client end you will still "see" the pty (not tty), but sway will not run in the background by default. That pty will be occupied by sway and you'll see sway's log output. Of course you could background sway just as you would background any other program (by ending with a '&' though you'd also likely want to use nohup and redirect stdout/stderr).

1. Negative

2. Yes

kurisu@archbox:~#systemctl status seatd
● seatd.service - Seat management daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/seatd.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2023-07-14 18:48:25 EDT; 1h 23min ago
       Docs: man:seatd(1)
   Main PID: 365 (seatd)
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 38393)
     Memory: 328.0K
        CPU: 1ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/seatd.service
             └─365 seatd -g seat

Jul 14 18:48:25 archbox systemd[1]: Started Seat management daemon.
Jul 14 18:48:25 archbox seatd[365]: 00:00:00.000 [INFO] [seatd/seat.c:39] Created VT-bound seat seat0
Jul 14 18:48:25 archbox seatd[365]: 00:00:00.000 [INFO] [seatd/seatd.c:194] seatd started

3.1 This is what I'm working towards now with wayvnc. Having some separate issues with that at this time.
.2 Since you mentioned the display being connected, it IS a headless server right now, the monitor I originally used before I set up SSH is not in place. I will go test plugin the monitor, test, and edit this post when finished.
.3 I'll also start looking into your comments about using nohup and redirecting the stdout/stderr as well.

EDIT-
3. With the monitor now attached and the server rebooted it is no longer headless
3.1 Issues with wayvnc are

kurisu@archbox:~#wayvnc
ERROR: ../wayvnc/src/main.c: 384: WAYLAND_DISPLAY is not set in the environment
ERROR: ../wayvnc/src/main.c: 1391: Failed to initialise wayland

3.2 The issue with seatd is persisting despite the head being reconnected. I assume at this point it might be a permission issue? I had a similar issue when setting up openvpn where the server service would fail out because the openvpn group didn't have the correct permissions over a network function, if i remember correctly

2ND EDIT

3.2 The issue with Sway/seatd did NOT occur on local tty1, but continues via pty1. (there is an error in my config somewhere but thats probably an incorrect wallpaper configuration)

Last edited by kurisusip (2023-07-15 00:39:48)

Trilby · 2023-07-15 01:11:27

Are you sure you're not logged in as root? Your non-root user PS1 ends with a '#'? Starting a wayland compositor to run on a remote system via a pty through ssh works - I do it frequently. I have not done so on a headless system, or with vnc though.

For 3.1, you need to run waynvc from within a wayland session - start sway first.

Last edited by Trilby (2023-07-15 01:12:40)

kurisusip · 2023-07-15 01:35:47

Trilby wrote:

Are you sure you're not logged in as root? Your non-root user PS1 ends with a '#'? Starting a wayland compositor to run on a remote system via a pty through ssh works - I do it frequently. I have not done so on a headless system, or with vnc though.
For 3.1, you need to run waynvc from within a wayland session - start sway first.

Kurisu is a user with root privs, the '#' is a cisco ios thing i put on my .bashrc for purely visual reasons. The other half of that comment is probably some fuckup or incorrect setting/code on my end. Just no idea where to pickup at this point.

3.1 Noted, thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2023-07-14 23:31:00

Logging in remotely to Arch with Wayland and Sway from Windows

#2 2023-07-14 23:47:21

Re: Logging in remotely to Arch with Wayland and Sway from Windows

#3 2023-07-15 00:00:51

Re: Logging in remotely to Arch with Wayland and Sway from Windows

#4 2023-07-15 00:16:17

Re: Logging in remotely to Arch with Wayland and Sway from Windows

#5 2023-07-15 01:11:27

Re: Logging in remotely to Arch with Wayland and Sway from Windows

#6 2023-07-15 01:35:47

Re: Logging in remotely to Arch with Wayland and Sway from Windows

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