Arch Linux

Wey

Member

Registered: 2011-04-22

Posts: 217

[Solved] lxdm session selection

How does session selection work in lxdm? It detects gnome and awesome (via the desktop files in /usr/share/xsessions?) as expected, however i am unable to chose one of them. The upstream /etc/lxdm/Xsession seems somewhat obscure to me, but i figured it should receive  a session as $1, since its states:

if [ $# -eq 1 -a -n "$1" ]; then
    LXSESSION=$1
else
# default session
    LXSESSION=/usr/bin/startlxde
fi

Though, the default file did not work for me. I put echo "$@" in the beginning of the script and it always outputs "startlxde" instead of the session i choose at the login screen. As a temporarily solution i emptied /etc/lxdm/Xsession and put this in it:

exec ck-launch-session gnome-session

So i have to launch awesome via xinit currently. How can i distinguish between different sessions within lxdm?

Last edited by Wey (2011-08-11 15:46:15)

Wey

Member

Registered: 2011-04-22

Posts: 217

Re: [Solved] lxdm session selection

Does it work out of the box for everyone else? I'm currently running lxdm-git, compiled with --enable-gtk3, but i had the same issue with the stock lxdm. /var/log/lxdm.log says:

** Message: find greeter (nil)

** Message: find idle 0x8c7aa38

** Message: add 0x8c7aa38

** Message: prepare greeter on :0

** Message: start greeter on :0

** (process:534): DEBUG: user felix auth ok

** (process:534): DEBUG: login user felix session startlxde lang (null)

I wondered if lang (null) might be causing problems. I had a quick look at lxdm.c and there is a statement like

    if(!session ||!session[0] || !lang || !lang[0])
    {

Does lang have non-null values for anyone?

arlite

Member

From: .de

Registered: 2008-05-02

Posts: 31

Re: [Solved] lxdm session selection

Does lang have non-null values for anyone?

I did not used lxdm for a while, but my old ldxm.log shows instead if (null) the locale setting, which is for instance de_DE.UTF-8 for me.

** (process:1033): DEBUG: user user1 auth ok

** (process:1033): DEBUG: login user user1 session /usr/bin/startkde lang de_DE.UTF-8

Wey

Member

Registered: 2011-04-22

Posts: 217

Re: [Solved] lxdm session selection

Thanks for your input arlite, it seems to be partially solved now. I set lang=1 in the [display] section /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf and choose my locale at the login screen. The log showed the right locale now, but the session was still startlxde instead of gnome-session or awesome. Then i tried to put session=gnome-session:awesome in the [base] section, which worked surprisingly. Actually i had tried this before and it never had an effect. I experimentally set lang=0 again and session selection would fail.

So it needs an enumeration of sessions in lxdm.conf and a locale. It seems ridiculous to me, since it already generated a enumeration of sessions based on the content  of /usr/share/xsessions.

It is only partially solved though, since i lose my keyboard in awesome if launched through lxdm...

Wey

Member

Registered: 2011-04-22

Posts: 217

Re: [Solved] lxdm session selection

Strange, if i autostart an application from rc.lua, the keyboard gets activated again. So for now i'll just settle on spawning a terminal on login, which seems to be an acceptable workaround for me. Therefore I mark this as solved.