Bug#801529: xinit: startx fails when output is redirected
Package: xinit
Version: 1.3.4-1
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
As of my most recent sid upgrade, startx stopped working.
The problem turned out to be that it no longer supports redirection.
I was logging in to tty1 and running this in my .zlogin:
startx >& $HOME/.xsession-errors
As of the upgrade to the "run as user" X server, X fails to start.
It pauses for 5-10 seconds, then exits, leaving the terminal
settings wrong so I have to run reset.
.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log says:
[ 1000.714] (++) using VT number 1
[ 1000.714] (EE)
Fatal server error:
[ 1000.714] (EE) xf86OpenConsole: VT_ACTIVATE failed: Operation not permitted
[ 1000.714] (EE)
Running simply startx, without the redirect, works. But of course I
can no longer check output from programs run inside X.
Some comments on the web suggest that startx -- -keeptty will allow
redirection, but man xinit warns:
This option is only useful when debugging the server.
Not all platforms support (or can use) this option.
so it seems like that might not be a good long-term option.
Redhat claims to have a fix for the redirection problem:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1177513#c5
I can't verify whether their fix actually fixes the issue (and I'm
not sure how to find the actual code change involved in the fix,
or whether it was pushed upstream, though I'm guessing not since
that was back in January so Debian hopefully would have it by now).
I haven't been able to find any other way besides redirection to get
stdout and stderr for programs run inside X. Is there a new and
improved way that would make redirection unnecessary?
-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 3.14-2-686-pae (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
Versions of packages xinit depends on:
ii coreutils 8.23-4
ii libc6 2.19-22
ii libx11-6 2:1.6.3-1
ii x11-common 1:7.7+12
ii xauth 1:1.0.9-1
Versions of packages xinit recommends:
ii gnome-terminal [x-terminal-emulator] 3.18.0-1
ii openbox [x-window-manager] 3.6.1-1
ii xserver-xorg [xserver] 1:7.7+12
ii xterm [x-terminal-emulator] 320-1
xinit suggests no packages.
-- no debconf information
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