Re: FVWM: a silly question

From: Paul D. Smith <psmith_at_baynetworks.com>
Date: 18 May 1999 10:05:57 -0400

%% Bob Woodside <proteus_at_pcnet.com> writes:

>> Sergei Gerasenko wrote:

>> Hi everybody, I have a rather stupid question but I haven't been
>> able to figure out where startx keeps its output. Does anybody
>> know?

  bw> Now...on to your question. startx is just a shell script that
  bw> invokes xinit. It doesn't put its output anyplace special, which
  bw> means that it will just get written to the console from which you
  bw> invoked it.

  bw> A common practice is to modify startx to suit your own
  bw> preferences. I do this to have the stdout/stderr output redirected
  bw> to /dev/console to that I can view the output with xconsole or
  bw> some such tool while X is running. To do this, look for a line -
  bw> probably the last line in startx - that looks something like this:

  bw> xinit $clientargs -- $serverargs

  bw> and modify it to look like this:

  bw> xinit $clientargs -- $serverargs >/dev/console 2>&1

I don't like changing system scripts like startx, since it makes package
managers (Debian, RPM, etc.) nervous.

Also, I switch between XDM (which wants ~/.xsession) and vanilla startx
(which wants ~/.xinitrc) fairly regularly.

What I do is this:

  * In ~/.xinitrc:

      . $HOME/.xrc

  * In ~/.xsession:

      . $HOME/.xrc

  * In ~/.xrc:

      # This is the X startup script...
      #

      exec >$HOME/.Xerrorlog 2>&1

      # Do some stuff!

      exec fvwm2

Note I use bash; if you don't use a Bourne-ish shell (then switch! No
no no that's not it... :) you may need to rewrite some or all of the
above. I don't really know how to do it in csh.

The trick in ~/.xrc is the exec; if you don't give a filename arg to
exec, it modifies the stdout/stderr of the current process (the shell).
Thus you can redirect all subsequent output to wherever you like (here I
use a file). See the man page for sh (or bash or whatever).

Lastly I exec the window manager so when it exits, my X session exits.

HTH!

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Paul D. Smith <psmith_at_baynetworks.com>         Network Management Development
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.
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Received on Tue May 18 1999 - 09:07:33 BST

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