RE: FVWM: How to get startx to run fvwm on FreeBSD 2.2.6

From: Bob Woodside <proteus_at_pcnet.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 21:25:48 -0400 (EDT)

On 10-Jun-98 Charles A. Peters wrote:
> I have downloaded the fvwm port from the freebsd ftp site, but I do not know
> how to get it to load when I run startx. I know that I'm missing something
> simple, but I have worked on this for several hours with no success, any
> suggestions?

        startx is just a small shell script that will invoke xinit,
which will start up the X server and also run another little shell
script called xinitrc. xinitrc is typically used to start up a few
X clients, including your window manager. This is the guy you need
to change. I don't know where it's kept on FreeBSD systems - maybe
someplace like /usr/X11/lib/X11/xinit/ - look around for it.

        Somewhere near the bottom of xinitrc you should see a line
that invokes whatever window manager you're currently using, so change
that to invoke fvwm (or fvwm2) instead.


        If you want to get a little fancier, you can replace the line
that starts your WM with a small loop that will keep your X session
(and all your apps, usually) alive in case you accidentally terminate
your WM, and allow you to recover. Here's a snippet from my xinitrc
that I've used for years:

WM="fvwm2"
while [ "$WM" != "Quit" ]
do
  $WM
  WM=`xmessage -name "Quit X" "Really quit, or restart WM?" \
  -buttons "Quit,fvwm2,olvwm,piewm,9wm,kwm" -print`
done

        In this example, the other WM choices are simply various window
managers that do not interact gracefully with FVWM's Restart function.
You might want instead to give yourself a choice of restarting FVWM or
your old WM, in case FVWM isn't set up properly and fails to come up
on the first try. Good luck!



 
--
Visit the official FVWM web page at <URL:http://www.hpc.uh.edu/fvwm/>.
To unsubscribe from the list, send "unsubscribe fvwm" in the body of a
message to majordomo_at_hpc.uh.edu.
To report problems, send mail to fvwm-owner_at_hpc.uh.edu.
Received on Wed Jun 10 1998 - 20:37:47 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Mon Aug 29 2016 - 19:38:01 BST