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

From: "Charles A. Peters" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 18:31:54 +0000

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?

Thanks in advance,

Charles

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---

From: Bob Woodside <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 21:25:48 -0400 (EDT)

> simple, but I have worked on this for several hours with no success, any 

        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!

---

From: "Patrick K." <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 18:47:33 -0700 (PDT)

Hiya Charles,

> simple, but I have worked on this for several hours with no success, any 

   1. Check to see if there is `.xinitrc' in your home directory?

   2. If 1 yeilds true

      A. Edit the file and see what is the last line in there.
         It should be some sort of a wm.

      B. If A yeilds true

         i. Make a BACKUP of it.
        ii. Change it to "fvwm"
       iii. You are done.  exit(0);

      C. If A yeild false

         i. Make a BACKUP of it.
        ii. Try adding "fvwm" to the end of it.
       iii. Try running startx and see if it works.
        iv. You are done.  exit(0);

   3. If 1 yeilds false

      A. There is a system default `xinitrc' file that is getting
         executed.
         I am not sure where this would be on a freeBSD system.
         On Linux it is in:

            /var/X11R6/lib/xinit/xinitrc

      B. Copy it to your home directory under the name of `.xinitrc'.

      C. Go to step 2.A

   Hope this helps,

Patrick K.