[xmonad] Going Gnomeless (and Unityless on Oneiric)

[Brandon Allbery]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 19:11, Jacek Generowicz <jacek.generowicz at cern.ch>wrote:

> Brandon Allbery wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 18:08, Jacek Generowicz <
> jacek.generowicz at cern.ch>wrote:
> > > sudo /usr/bin/X :1 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:1 -nolisten tcp vt8
> -novtswitch
> >
> > That's going to start an X server running nothing and with no way for
> > anything else to connect to it; not very useful.
>
> That would explain the black screens then :-) But how come something
> equivalent seems to be running on :0 and doing something useful?
>

Because it was launched by LightDM, which is managing it by initially
displaying a "greeter", then launching a session when someone logs in via
the greeter.  The other alternative is xinit/startx, which launches a
server and then feeds a connection to that server to a script which
attaches things to it to make a session.


> > It also appears that LightDM documentation is nonexistent.
> > https://answers.launchpad.net/lightdm/+question/179211 is about how to
> > manage multiple displays; while it gives a recipe, it also notes that the
> > only way to work this stuff out currently is to read the source code.  :/
>
> From the above URL:
>
>   Overall, any unknown keyword or unexpected configuration in the
>   conffile is silently ignored
>
> Hmmm. That's encouraging. Sigh.
>

Yeh.  Personally I'd be removing it and installing gdm or kdm at that
point.  :/

By 'multiple seats' does he mean that LightDM will run a login screen
> on :0 :1 :2 etc.? So I could have my working session on :0 and keep
> starting new ones to experiment on :1? But will the display mananager
> have to be restarted to pick up changes in desktop files?
>

It might need to be restarted to find new session definitions, but it
shouldn't need to be for changes to existing ones.  (Although, "famous last
words" --- I generally expect better from the freedesktop.org folks than
something this undocumented.)

-- 
brandon s allbery                                      allbery.b at gmail.com
wandering unix systems administrator (available)     (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
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