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I recently successfully installed Arch Linux in VirtualBox, for the first time. I want to install FVWM, so I installed X Server, and then ran pacman -S fvwm. It says that fvwm has been installed, but the terminal still stays there and there is no windowing. I know I am probably doing something stupid, but I'm not sure what. Please tell me what I am doing wrong.

Update: I installed GDM. When I select "fvwm" in the menu and enter my password, the screen turns black, several console messages with a green "okay" status to the left appear, the screen goes black again, and then it turns gray and returns to the login screen.

hkk
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2 Answers2

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The proper way to start FVWM in Arch is to add the line "exec fvwm" to your .xinitrc file, then restart the VM. Did you try that? Or: you should see it in the "Sessions menu" at login, if you use either kdm or gdm (I think...). Did you check this

MariusMatutiae
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The problem here is that your $HOME directory is owned by root (the OP pasted this in chat):

$ ls -l /home 
total 20 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 13 18:38 cloudcoder2000 drwx------ 2 root root

So you don't have write access to your $HOME which means that X cannot create a $HOME/.Xinit file and that is giving you the error you see. The following commands should fix it:

sudo rm ~/.Xauthority
sudo chown cloudcoder2000:cloudcoder2000 ~/

You can now add this line to your ~/.xinitrc (this command will create the file if it does not exist):

echo "exec fwvm" >> ~/.xinitrc

Now, running startx should start an fwvm session.

terdon
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