Installing FVWM in Arch Linux

2

I recently successfully installed Arch Linux in VirtualBox, for the first time. I want to install FVWM, so I installed X Server, and then ran pacman -S fvwm. It says that fvwm has been installed, but the terminal still stays there and there is no windowing. I know I am probably doing something stupid, but I'm not sure what. Please tell me what I am doing wrong.

Update: I installed GDM. When I select "fvwm" in the menu and enter my password, the screen turns black, several console messages with a green "okay" status to the left appear, the screen goes black again, and then it turns gray and returns to the login screen.

hkk

Posted 2013-10-12T02:50:54.467

Reputation: 183

What happens if you run startx? If that does not work, post your /usr/bin/startx file. – terdon – 2013-10-12T03:28:15.760

@terdon: When I run startx, the screen goes black and resizes, but then nothing happens and ctrl-c doesn't work. I have reboot through the virtualbox menu. – hkk – 2013-10-12T20:50:00.967

@terdon: I see the /usr/bin/startx and I am able to access it through nano, but I am not sure how to post it since I just installed Arch. – hkk – 2013-10-12T20:50:57.957

Just check if there is an exec fvwm line at the end, there shouldn't be, but just in case. Try what MariusMatutiae suggests, if that fails, just add exec fvwm to the end of startx. Oh, and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace should let you exit after you've run startx. – terdon – 2013-10-12T23:24:04.053

Neither of the suggestions worked. Also, when I run startx still goes black, and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace doesn't work. I get the error xauth: timeout in locking authority file /home/cloudcoder2000/.Xauthority. It pops up 3 times, then I see several output messages, and then finally the screen goes black. – hkk – 2013-10-13T23:45:12.640

I just got the same black screen again, and I didn't power off this time. After a few minutes, the error message No protocol specified popped up several times, then the message xinit: giving up then xinit: unable to connect to X server: Resource temporarily unavailable followed by waiting for X server to shut down (EE) Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file. and then xinit: server error and finally xauth: timeout in locking authority file /home/cloudcoder2000/.Xauthority. It then returns to a terminal line. – hkk – 2013-10-13T23:52:56.977

Is this after a fresh reboot? It sounds like there is another X session running or one crashed. Have you read through this?

– terdon – 2013-10-13T23:56:09.020

I re-installed X Server and rebooted. startx works properly when I run sudo startx but still goes to the blank black screen when I only run startx. – hkk – 2013-10-14T00:54:03.250

Compare /root/.xinitrc and $HOME/.xinitrc. Also, try deleting your ~/.Xauthority file in case you've changed its permissions or something. It will be recreated next time you try to log in. – terdon – 2013-10-14T00:56:28.470

let us continue this discussion in chat

– hkk – 2013-10-14T00:59:51.590

Answers

2

The problem here is that your $HOME directory is owned by root (the OP pasted this in chat):

$ ls -l /home 
total 20 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 13 18:38 cloudcoder2000 drwx------ 2 root root

So you don't have write access to your $HOME which means that X cannot create a $HOME/.Xinit file and that is giving you the error you see. The following commands should fix it:

sudo rm ~/.Xauthority
sudo chown cloudcoder2000:cloudcoder2000 ~/

You can now add this line to your ~/.xinitrc (this command will create the file if it does not exist):

echo "exec fwvm" >> ~/.xinitrc

Now, running startx should start an fwvm session.

terdon

Posted 2013-10-12T02:50:54.467

Reputation: 45 216

2

The proper way to start FVWM in Arch is to add the line "exec fvwm" to your .xinitrc file, then restart the VM. Did you try that? Or: you should see it in the "Sessions menu" at login, if you use either kdm or gdm (I think...). Did you check this

MariusMatutiae

Posted 2013-10-12T02:50:54.467

Reputation: 41 321

Asked: 2013-10-12T02:50:54.467

Viewed: 425 times

Active: 2014-12-24T04:19:35.193