Arch Linux

jlacerda

Member

Registered: 2019-11-23

Posts: 11

LightDM autologin to Openbox exits after +-5 min

Hi all,

I’ve installed Arch Linux on a very old netbook (Eee PC 1015PX, Intel Atom) and am trying to run a minimal setup with openbox as my only window manager.
I use lightdm with lightdm-gtk-greeter for autologin.

Goal:
Boot directly into Openbox (no greeter, no DE), and stay there — just a terminal window and tint2.

Installed:

pacman -S xorg-server openbox lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter xf86-video-intel

Also added: xterm, tint2, picom, volumeicon

Config:
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-autologin.conf

[Seat:*]
autologin-user=jlacerda
autologin-session=openbox
greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter

~/.config/openbox/autostart

It's a file, not a directory. Contents:

xterm &

User jlacerda is in group autologin:

groups jlacerda
# => jlacerda wheel autologin

Session file exists:

ls /usr/share/xsessions/openbox.desktop
# /usr/share/xsessions/openbox.desktop

Issue:

After boot, it logs in correctly to Openbox and shows xterm. But within a few minutes, the session exits and returns to the LightDM login screen.

From the logs:

journalctl -b | grep lightdm | grep autologin

Shows:

lightdm[445]: pam_succeed_if(lightdm-autologin:auth): requirement "user ingroup autologin" was met by user "jlacerda"
lightdm[445]: pam_unix(lightdm-autologin:session): session opened for user jlacerda(uid=1000) by jlacerda(uid=0)
lightdm[445]: pam_unix(lightdm-autologin:session): session closed for user jlacerda

No clear crash or error in ~/.xsession-errors or Xorg.0.log.

What I’ve tried:

Ensured autostart is a file and starts a terminal

    Added long-running dummy command to autostart:

    while :; do sleep 60; done &

    Reinstalled lightdm, rechecked user groups, confirmed session file is correct

    Verified system has xf86-video-intel for graphics

    No errors in Xorg or segfaults after boot

Question:

What causes the session to end even though a terminal is running?

Do I need to run something else like dbus, gnome-keyring, or polkit to avoid LightDM terminating the session?

How can I ensure Openbox stays running indefinitely after autologin?

Thanks in advance — I’m really trying to make this little laptop usable with a beautiful minimal Openbox setup, and don’t want to go back to Lubuntu:-)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 65,907

Re: LightDM autologin to Openbox exits after +-5 min

Goal:
Boot directly into Openbox (no greeter, no DE), and stay there — just a terminal window and tint2.

So why do you install lightdm?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Getty# … al_console
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Start_X_at_login

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Core_d … _core_dump
W/ your current setup, the session keeping process is openbox, if that crashes, the session ends.
The autostart there won't help you at all.

If you're facing an unstable WM, you could either loop it in your xinitrc (if you pursue that road) or use something else as session keeping process  (as long as the xinitrc script runs the session will remain active)

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