xdm fails to start awesomewm
 

Hey all,

I installed awesome from slackbuilds.org and it works flawlessly in runlevel 3. When I boot my machine into my default runlevel 4, where I use xdm as desktop manager, awesome won't start. I'm using the default .xinitrc file which comes with the slackbuild.

In .xsession-errors I see the following error:

Any ideas what could cause this?

Yes, it seems to happen when the xinitrc uses the following command format to start a window manager:
ck-launch-session dbus-launch --exit-with-session <window-manager>

You could try changing /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config to use
DisplayManager.*.authName: MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 if it's still using XDM-AUTHORISATION (already changed in slackware-current I believe) and see if that helps.


Alternatively, you'll need to use an xinitrc that uses the eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session` approach to launching dbus. The only problem here is that dbus-launch needs to be run within the console-kit session itself so you'll probably need a startwm script to run it and then invoke the window manager.

As an example, I'll attach my generic window-manager startup script and an xinitrc that calls it so you can see what I'm talking about. Feel free to do what you want with them. :)

@Gazl: very interesting approach. Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome. :) I've used xdm for many years here as I don't install KDE.


BTW, I've also modified my /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession script and introduced a /etc/xprofile and /etc/xprofile.d/ which get called instead of /etc/profile (never really liked how that gets called by the stock Xsession shipped with xdm).

If you're having trouble with XDM, you might also like to try LXDM. It's on SBo, and Arch have some good docs here. In my case, getting awesomewm to start (for a specific user) was as simple as putting:
in ~/.dmrc

Defaults can be set in /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf

Thank you @GazL, I'll try your solution next week. I'm not at work and therefore not at the affected machine right now.

@drgibbon I know LXDM and I don't have anything against using it other than preferring to use a login manager that comes with a Slackware install. What I also like about XDM is that it integrates well with runlevel 3 and the xinitrc scripts generated by xwmconfig. I'll probably stick with XDM and drop awesome if I can't work it out. I'm only trying out awesome again after years on i3wm anyway.

@GazL Thank you, "DisplayManager.*.authName: MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1" solved the problem.