Bugzilla Bug 201535

The Session file that fluxbox provides is inadequate to start up an X session
properly. At the minimum the following is missing:


# run all system xinitrc shell scripts.
if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ]; then
    for i in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/* ; do
        if [ -x "$i" ]; then
            . "$i"
        fi
    done
fi

Take a look at /etc/X11/Sessions/Xsession for some more examples.

Cardoe: just glancing at /etc/X11/Sessions/Xsession - it doesn't do anything
with xinitrc.d either.

Right. That script is wrong as well. Only reason that hasn't been caught is
most people don't use startx + twm for anything but testing.

I suppose you mean /etc/X11/Sessions/fluxbox and not
/usr/share/xsessions/fluxbox.desktop

But shouldn't this be the job of xdm or the 'startx' script?

It's provided by /etc/X11/Sessions/Gnome, you can check with KDE users how it's
provided for them.

Granted, /etc/X11/gdm/Xsession provides it as well, so if you were to use gdm
to login to fluxbox it would work for you.

Under /etc/X11/Sessions/, Gnome and Xsession are almost identical, differing as
follows:
Xsession: loads xterm, errfile has 'xsession' in the name, cleans up after
xbanner, tries in order to find what to start:
$HOME/.xsession:$HOME/.Xclients:/etc/X11/xinit/Xclients:/etc/X11/Xclients:xsm
Gnome: starts an ssh-agent if none already exist, reads
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d, tries in order to find what to start:
$HOME/.gnomerc:/etc/X11/gdm/gnomerc:gnome-session

KDE calls /usr/kde/3.5/bin/startkde, which is radically different from the
Gnome and Xsession ones.

However, the sparseness of the fluxbox init explains why
Xresources/Xmodmap/Xkbmap seemed to be ignored sometimes.

I'll attach a new /etc/X11/Sessions/fluxbox shortly.

Created an attachment (id=137979) [edit]
/etc/X11/Sessions/fluxbox

New script for the fluxbox session start. Based on Xsession and Gnome session
scripts. Untested still.

while doing this, I noticed a bug in the Gnome+Xsession scripts, so I filed bug
#201625 for them to fix up their XkbSymbols loading - it's fixed in my attached
script anyway.

Thanks very much for the patch, but this really seems like a lot of code
duplication, especially if the only difference between this script and the
Xsession and Gnome ones is the last line.

Do we really want to maintain these all separately when it could be done
somewhere more central?

For example, have a common /etc/X11/misc/xession.sh that I (and other sessions)
could just source before calling 'exec startfluxbox'?

I'm in favour of a merge myself, but I posted the separate version because
following the past history of Xsession was very hard. It appears to have
fractionated and forked many times, and then each gotten different changes
along the way.

Maybe dberkholz can chime in with a plan to rationalize all of them.

gentoo-x86/gnome-base/gnome-session/files/Gnome - last change 2002-06-02
Xsession - originally part of x11-base/xfree, but bounced around many places in
CVS - additionally, there is an outdated copy installed into
/usr/$libdir/X11/xdm/

Here's a list of every one that ever existed in the tree, ordered by when they
were last touched.
 Dec 15  2005 x11-apps/xdm/files/Xsession,v
 Dec 15  2005 x11-apps/xinit/files/Xsession,v
 Nov 16  2005 gnome-base/gdm/files/2.6.0/Attic/Xsession,v
 Sep 12  2005 gnome-base/gdm/files/2.6.0-openpam/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jun  5  2005 gnome-base/gdm/files/2.4.4/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan  3  2005 x11-base/xfree/files/4.3.0/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan  3  2005 x11-base/xfree/files/4.3.0/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 27  2004 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.1-r2/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 27  2004 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.1-r2/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Dec 14  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.1.0-r6/Attic/Xsession,v
 Dec 14  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r12/Attic/Xsession,v
 Dec 14  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r12/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Aug 29  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.3.99.8/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Aug 28  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.3.99.8/Attic/Xsession,v
 May 20  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.1/Attic/Xsession,v
 May 20  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.1/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 May 20  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.1-r1/Attic/Xsession,v
 May 20  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.1-r1/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Mar 10  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.902/Attic/Xsession,v
 Mar 10  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.902/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Feb 28  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.4/Attic/Xsession,v
 Feb 28  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.4/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Feb  2  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.3-r2/Attic/Xsession,v
 Feb  2  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.3-r2/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 16  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.3-r1/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 16  2003 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.3-r1/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Dec 26  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.3/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Dec 26  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99.3/Attic/Xsession,v
 Dec  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99/Attic/Xsession,v
 Dec  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.99/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Sep  8  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r9/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Sep  8  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r11/Attic/Xsession,v
 Sep  8  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r11/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Sep  8  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r9/Attic/Xsession,v
 May 31  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r10/Attic/Xsession,v
 May 31  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r10/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 May 31  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r8/Attic/Xsession,v
 May 31  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r8/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Apr  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r5/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Apr  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r6/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Apr  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r7/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Apr  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.1.0-r1/Attic/Xsession,v
 Apr  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r5/Attic/Xsession,v
 Apr  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r6/Attic/Xsession,v
 Apr  7  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r7/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 28  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r4/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 28  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r4/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 28  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r3/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 28  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r3/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 28  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r2/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 28  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r2/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 28  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.1.0-r5/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 28  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.1.0-r4/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 20  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r1/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 20  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r1/Sessions/Attic/Xsession,v
 Jan 20  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0/Attic/Xsession,v
 Nov 11  2001 x11-base/xfree/files/Attic/Xsession,v
 Nov 11  2001 x11-base/xfree/files/4.1.0-r3/Attic/Xsession,v
 Nov 11  2001 x11-base/xfree/files/4.1.0-r2/Attic/Xsession,v

And Gnome,v:
 Dec 21  2006 gnome-base/gnome-core/files/Attic/Gnome,v
 Dec 15  2005 gnome-base/gnome-session/files/Gnome,v
 Jan 20  2002 x11-base/xfree/files/4.2.0-r1/Sessions/Attic/Gnome,v

What about when gdm or kdm starts the Fluxbox session - Should they run this
too instead of 'startfluxbox'?  Or do they automatically do some of this magic
already?

Alright, I have included this script in fluxbox-1.0.0-r1, thanks for submitting
it!

I look forward to the day when this is all centralized.

Okay, maybe this will never, ever actually be centralized.