Using X without a Display Manager
Setting up Xorg without system wide modifications
To run X11 as a regular user, without services.xserver.enable = true;
in configuration.nix, do the following:
First, install packages:
- X11 itself:
xorg.xorgserver
- X11 input modules
xorg.xf86inputevdev
xorg.xf86inputsynaptics
xorg.xf86inputlibinput
- X11 video modules
xorg.xf86videointel
xorg.xf86videoati
xorg.xf86videonouveau
You probably want to use DRI acceleration for X; enable it and OpenGL in configuration.nix: hardware.opengl.enable = true;
and hardware.opengl.driSupport = true;
.
Then, it's just necessary to gather X configuration files into one directory and create a config file that also points X at the correct module paths, by running the following script (which should be re-run each time you run nixos-rebuild switch
), but you will need to add or remove to the pkgs
and fontpkgs
arrays according to your preferences:
generateXorgConf.sh
------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
#generate unprivileged user xorg.conf for nixOS
#before running:
# install any desired packages by placing them in `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix`
# update by running `nix-channel --update` and `nixos-rebuild switch`
config_dir=${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/xorg.conf.d
mkdir -p "$config_dir"
cd "$config_dir"
#failed glob expansions become empty, not literal 'foo/*'
shopt -s nullglob
get_pkg_path() {
attr=$1
nix show-derivation -f '<nixpkgs>' "$attr" | jq -r '.[].env.out'
}
#add to this set according to your driver needs
pkgs="
xorg.xf86inputevdev
xorg.xf86videointel
xorg.xf86inputsynaptics
xorg.xorgserver
"
#make the intel backlight helper setuid if it isn't already
xf86videointel_path=$(get_pkg_path xorg.xf86videointel)
backlight_helper_path="${xf86_video_intel_path}/libexec/xf86-video-intel-backlight-helper"
if [ -e "$backlight_helper_path" -a ! -u "$backlight_helper_path" ]; then
sudo chmod +s ${xf86_video_intel_path}/libexec/xf86-video-intel-backlight-helper
fi
echo 'Section "Files"' > 00-nix-module-paths.conf
for pkg in $pkgs; do
pkg_path=$(get_pkg_path $pkg)
for conf in "$pkg_path"/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/*; do
ln -sf "$conf" ./
done
echo ' ModulePath "'"$pkg_path"'/lib/xorg/modules/"' >> 00-nix-module-paths.conf
done
#add to this set according to your font preferences
fontpkgs="
xorg.fontmiscmisc
ucsFonts
"
for pkg in $fontpkgs; do
pkg_path=$(get_pkg_path $pkg)
path="$pkg_path"'/share/fonts/'
[ -d "$path" ] && echo ' FontPath "'"$path"'"' >> 00-nix-module-paths.conf
path="$pkg_path"'/lib/X11/fonts/misc/'
[ -d "$path" ] && echo ' FontPath "'"$path"'"' >> 00-nix-module-paths.conf
done
echo 'EndSection' >> 00-nix-module-paths.conf
You can now start X11 by running:
startx -- :0 -configdir ~/.config/xorg.conf.d
Setting up Xorg system-wide but without a Display Manager
If you don't mind having services.xserver.enable = true;
but you don't want a display manager, and you want only a TTY login prompt, use the following in your configuration.nix
:
services.xserver.displayManager.startx.enable = true;
startx
is treated as a displayManager and therefore it is used instead of the default (lightdm
).
Setting up the user's D-Bus Daemon
Both of the methods above, don't start the user's dbus-daemon properly on startup. Unfortunately, it is unclear exactly why this is missing, but here's a fix for startx users:
Put the following in your ~/.xinitrc
:
if test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"; then
eval $(dbus-launch --exit-with-session --sh-syntax)
fi
systemctl --user import-environment DISPLAY XAUTHORITY
if command -v dbus-update-activation-environment >/dev/null 2>&1; then
dbus-update-activation-environment DISPLAY XAUTHORITY
fi