[NixOS] Xfce and i3 combination broken

[brodul]

I am using 15.09 channel.

Problem

When the desktop initializes the xfce4-session and the xfce4-power-manager are not started.
Meaning that the events like 'Suspend on lid close' are not working (no power manager). And the nm-applet is not started ( no xfce startup programs)

Steps to reproduce:

• add this lines to configuration.nix

  services.xserver.desktopManager.xfce.enable = true;
  services.xserver.windowManager.i3.enable = true;
  services.xserver.windowManager.default = "i3";

• rebuild switch the configuration
• restart X server

Possible solutions/workarounds:

• deleting xfce4 user settings (goodbye state) (does not help)
• configuring .i3 to start nm-applet (works)
• configuring .i3 to start xfce4-power-manager (does not work (lack of permissions in order to connect to DBUS) )

[domenkozar]

Do you by any chance have ~/.xsession file? That will override xfce startup.

[brodul]

I have no ~/.xsession nor ~/.xinitrc.

[domenkozar]

Hmm, OK. Is this something that started recently? cc @vcunat

[vcunat]

I don't know, as I just use desktopManager.xfce.enable = true; and auto-start WM from my xfce session (XMonad). I'm not even certain windowManager is a good way to configure such things, as it seems very user-specific to me.

[vcunat]

suspend-on-lid-close: does it really not work? IIRC the current config should be that it does suspend by default unless a desktop/power manager overrides it.

[vcunat]

Side note: multi-user systems aren't very common nowadays, but still, it feels wrong to me (personally) to set such things in configuration.nix. Maybe we should allow them (also) in ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix or a similar location (in future), even custom desktopManager, etc. (Not very constructive for this issue; I'm sorry.)

[brodul]

@vcunat Suspend on lid works for the first time. Then stops working.
I know it's a bit optimistic to expect xfce and i3 work out of the box (just by configuring NixOS), but it did in 14.12 release and before.

Anyway I fixed it with the help @domenkozar . I was comparing the setup with @domenkozar which is using the unstable all the time.
So now I reproduced his settings and now it works for me.
My configuration.nix is the same.

I just added .xsession (don't forget to chmod +x it) to my home which overrides xserver initialization.

startxfce4&
dunst&
nm-applet&
exec i3

It works for me. But the behavior definitely changed from 14.12 to 15.09 .