labwc won't start, plenty of errors about labwc

[johanmalm]

I'm glad that worked.

I'm on Arch and I think systemd sets XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. I'm not sure what the advice is for non-systemd setups.

Presumably you could just add export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=$HOME/.run to .profile, .zshrc, .zshenv or similar. I'm not sure what the "official" advice.

[johanmalm]

It looks like you've used an Openbox rc.xml file. The syntaxes are fairly close, but just taking the openbox files is a bad starting point.

Try without an rc.xml to just see if you can get it started with default settings.

You need a font installed (e.g. ttf-dejavu). You probably do already, but just to make sure.

Try with:

cd $HOME
mkdir foo
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=$HOME/foo labwc

[wastlnd]

Hey @johanmalm thanks for your help, actually you were right, trying to run labwc without rc.xml works without throwing errors. How could I set a proper xdg runtime directory to be set at login? I'm using zsh.

[wastlnd]

Thanks again @johanmalm , I don't know if there's a "best" solution for a systemd-less system, but in case I think Id have to create this .run directory by myself, right?

[Consolatis]

I think Id have to create this .run directory by myself, right?

Yes.

Usually $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is located on some tmpfs but technically its not required to be on a tmpfs. Usually its /run/user/1000 for uid 1000. This has the benefit of being empty on system restart. You can use mkdir -p "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR" in your .profile to create a directory if it doesn't exist.

[johanmalm]

I've tried running labwc with a very small setup on Arch a couple of times. The only dependency that was non-obvious (to me) was polkit and ttf-dejavu (or whatever).

I'll close this for now, but if you find a way to run without polkit, then let us know and we document it somewhere.

[Narrat]

Didn't test that yet, but somewhere on my ToDo is Polkit vs Seatd setup.
And there are some sparse ressources I stumbled upon so far:
https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Running-Sway-with-seatd%2C-elogind-or-systemd%E2%80%90logind#seatd
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Sway#Starting

And one thing I don't get from the initial post is whether seatd service is enabled and started (or if seatd-launch is used)

[wastlnd]

@johanmalm and @Narrat, thanks again for your suggestions, I didn't really used seatd as a service (the runit service requires dbus, that I have disabled), but simply type:
Sudo seatd -u $user | labwc
Instead of fiddling with the shell for the runtime directory, I found another option, that is installing pam_rundir, that automatically creates the /run/user/$uid directory and exports the variable. That should, in fact, require polkit, if I'm not wrong.