11
I can't get rootless xorg to work
(reddthat.com)
needs_root_roghts = no
Is that correct?
aka, is it RIGHT ?
no idea if relevant, but isn't 'needs_root_roghts' a typo? not 'rights' ?
Oh sorry, I transcribed it from my phone it doesn't actually have that one typo :p
oh well. it seemed too ez a fix, but still had to point it out
Faie enough.
Shouldn't you replace "x11-user" with your username?
If you still can't get it to work, take a look here and try the startx comand on a tty first (a display-mamager is yet another layer of complexity and potential blockers). If you get permission errors, try adding your user to the video group.
If you want to do it manually (without some limitations of startx), take a look at sx.
No apparently you don't need to replace it, if you do it just starts it as root. I can start xfce4 with startxfce4 as user but i can't start sddm as user from console, only as root. I did try changing it to x11-(username) and just (username) it was the same as just doing x11 or not having the file, although I could also have done something wrong there.
At this point just changing the dm might be easier tbh. Although idk if that woulf actually work. I believe it starts x with the sddm user and not your actual user because, well, you're not logged in
I'm feel you're jumping right into the problem from some tutorial or not-so-common knowledge. We do not have that context.
Is "x11-user" defined anywhere? sddm must know what to do with that setting.
Eh, I mean I did look at some tutorial but also some forums and at the archwiki for xorg, Idk if I looked at the one for sddm but it doesn't say anything different from what I saw, I kinda looked into the gentoo wiki for rootless xorg too or whatever but that didn't help much.
I am not expecting you to 100% know everything and help it's like well maybe someone might know what's wrong. idk.
sddm just says it failrd to change owner of the socket if i do sddm in the console.
Hey, use namei with some flags to find out if the directory lets the socket be created by that user and if there’s a directory in the tree that keeps that user from traversing it.
doesn't sddm need to run as root? i thought that all managers did.
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
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