xdm and .xsession-error

npc · 06-26-2005, 04:06 PM

Hi there, guys, it's been a while since i started looking for a way to display x errors output with torsmo on my desktop, finally i head something about .xsession-errors. However it seems that .xsession-errors is only created/updated if i use some session manager such as xdm. Is it possible to have such file or a similar one without any session manager, i mean booting to command line on rc.3 and not directly into x like in rc.4?

Is there any alternative place to get those errors messages. I really need that to manage dependencies on my slackware box.

Thank you.

NPC.

Noth · 06-26-2005, 04:12 PM

I believe if you just use startx to get to X, it just prints all of the X errors on stderr. So you could redirect that output to ~/.xsession-errors if you wanted.

npc · 06-27-2005, 07:08 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Noth
I believe if you just use startx to get to X, it just prints all of the X errors on stderr. So you could redirect that output to ~/.xsession-errors if you wanted.

I'm noobie. Could you explain me how to do that? I do start X with startx.

Thank you.

Noth · 06-27-2005, 05:42 PM

You use > to redirect output of one command to a file. If you run 'ls > blah' it'll put the directory listing in the file blah. But that's just stdout (standard output) so if the command uses stderr (standard error) it won't be redirected, but luckily you can redirect that as well. Every command starts off with stdin, stdout and stderr opened by the shell, the file handle numbers are 0,1 and 2 respectively and bash lets you redirect by filehandle so you can run 'ls 2>blah' and the file listing will be output to your screen with any errors going into blah.

There's a lot you can do with that, but essentially what you want to run is 'startx 2>.xsession-errors' and that should take care of it.

npc · 06-27-2005, 09:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Noth
You use > to redirect output of one command to a file. If you run 'ls > blah' it'll put the directory listing in the file blah. But that's just stdout (standard output) so if the command uses stderr (standard error) it won't be redirected, but luckily you can redirect that as well. Every command starts off with stdin, stdout and stderr opened by the shell, the file handle numbers are 0,1 and 2 respectively and bash lets you redirect by filehandle so you can run 'ls 2>blah' and the file listing will be output to your screen with any errors going into blah.

There's a lot you can do with that, but essentially what you want to run is 'startx 2>.xsession-errors' and that should take care of it.

Thank you so much! That's exactly what i was looking for. I was wondering, though, if there is a way to put "2>.xsession-errors" inside "startx", cuz it's a shell script (i guess). It's pretty annoying to type such a long command line just to launch X.

Noth · 06-27-2005, 09:32 PM

startx is distributed with X, I wouldn't change that. You can always setup your own shell alias though.

npc · 06-28-2005, 09:37 AM

I undestand... i've just created my first bash script. It's called "xstart" and it calls that long command line. I guess this we'll do just fine. Thank you very much.