I need to run GDM on raspberry pi 2 with a fresh arch linux. I installed:
xf86-video-fbdev
xorg-xinit
gdm
I created a ~/.xinitrc containing:
exec gdm
But when I use startx I get some text then a black screen.
3 Answers
GDM is a display manager. As described in that wikipedia article:
In the X Window System, an X display manager is a graphical login manager which starts a session on an X server from the same or another computer.
A display manager presents the user with a login screen. A session starts when a user successfully enters a valid combination of username and password.
Genrally what happens after you log in is the DM then runs your .xinitrc script.
But this is not how you are using it. You are logging in on the console, then trying to start X and run GDM as if it were a desktop environment, which is a very different thing.
If you wish to use GDM as a display manager (i.e., a graphical login), you will have to enable that through systemd, probably:
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target
Should work, although I am not an arch user and do not know any potential caveats about their configuration.
However, you will still need something other than a display manager listed in your xinitrc.
answered Jan 18, 2016 at 15:21
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no its not working i tried systemctl start gdm.service but what happen is black screen and nothing else– Haxk20Jan 18, 2016 at 15:43
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ok i installed xfce4 and some more packages: "pacman -S xorg-utils xorg-xinit dbus xorg-server xorg-utils xorg-server-utils mesa xorg-twm xterm xorg-xclock" and edit /.xinitrc: exec startxfce4 but now its gives me error:"/usr/lib/xorg-server/Xorg: error while loading shared libraries:/usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0: invalid ELF header– Haxk20Jan 18, 2016 at 16:30
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You've broken something and/or installed something from an invalid repository. It sounds as if you are new to both the pi and linux -- I recommend you create a new image using Raspbian, which should make things a easier.– goldilocks ♦Jan 18, 2016 at 16:33
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i tried raspbian too before arch and i dont like it i tried install gdm on raspbian and its runs :) but when i select gnome its shows black screen with cursor– Haxk20Jan 18, 2016 at 16:41
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im going to reinstall arch install the packages and see what happens but when its will not run i will install raspbian as the last change– Haxk20Jan 18, 2016 at 16:49
According to the ArchWiki article on xinitrc you should have copied the working default in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to your ~/.xinitrc and modified that to meet your requirements because the former has some stuff that you need, specifically:
if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ] ; then
for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/?* ; do
[ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
done
unset f
fiFurther reading of that specific article does look to be very helpful in this area.
I did it: I installed some packages from xorg and now when I type startx it starts xterm, and in xterm I type
systemctl start gdm.service
Get black screen, but after 1 minute it shows a screen with gdm finally.
gdm(gnome display manager) is an alternative tolightdm,xdmorkdm(the first is the default for a Raspbian install IIRC). That being the case I'd expect some part of the package handling system to have at least woken up at one point to ask "Do you want to use gdm or <insert current display manager utility here>, dear superuser?"