wiki: Using X without a Display Manager

[garbas]

https://nixos.org/wiki/Using_X_without_a_Display_Manager

[7c6f434c]

By now systemd has succeeded in completely breaking this approach and all possible ways to fix it. What should be done with the issue? And with the Wiki page?

[dezgeg]

Probably we can clarify in the manual that this is not supported.

[garbas]

i guess the wiki page says that it is not supported due to lack of interest. mentioning in the manual would be nice but not something we would need to do.

[7c6f434c]

i guess the wiki page says that it is not supported due to lack of interest. mentioning in the manual would be nice but not something we would need to mention.

In reality it is not supported due to complete impossibility to support
it with fresh systemd. It is actually the reason I do not use stock
NixOS.

[garbas]

@7c6f434c it looks like you are the one really hurt for this. would you be willing to document it with pointers to latest development?

[7c6f434c]

I am simply not sure what to documents here.

My understanding is (it can be copied into documentation as-is if there is a section for it):

systemd auditing and session management code currently assumes that there is a single process managing taking over the virtual terminals. In particular, this makes it impossible to use a logged in session at some terminal to launch an Xorg session (that will naturally be on another terminal) without going through systemctl.

If you really want to be able to spawn multiple Xorg sessions you can try taking a look at https://github.com/7c6f434c/7c6f434c-configurations/tree/master/initrd-to-read-boot and join the development — but currently this code runs with busybox as init and gives up any service supervision (although it does have start scripts for CUPS and Xorg).

[AndersonTorres]

I have a very, really radical issue with systemd. And this is the strongest reason IMHO to get it as an optional for NixOS.
The only drawback, in principle, is the fact systemd is a dependency for some serious softwares; but even Guix could "fix" it: http://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=8491

But we don't have so much workforce to study and tackle this issue.

[garbas]

i'm closing this issue since i'm not sure we have an idea what to document here. please reopen / comment if you think this is not the case.

[kyrias]

Old issue, but since this readily comes up when searching for this topic, I figured I'd at least respond to this:

In particular, this makes it impossible to use a logged in session at some terminal to launch an Xorg session (that will naturally be on another terminal)

No, it will not necessarily "naturally" be on another terminal, you can just tell Xorg to start on the current tty and it will happily comply.

[ivan]

This was implemented in #47773