Thursday, December 01, 2005

Fluxbox on OpenBSD 3.8

Xorg Setup

shell>Xorg -configure

This command will automatically detect your hardware specification and generate the xorg.conf.new as a template under your user home directory.

You can test your xorg.conf by using the command below

shell>Xorg -config /root/xorg.conf.new

Once you have proper xorg.conf.new under your user home directory, copy it to the /etc/X11

shell>cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now you are done with Xorg.

If you want to use xdm instead of gdm, normally you can just

shell>echo "xdm_flags=\"\"" > /etc/rc.conf.local

Fluxbox Setup

Before you install, you should add this two lines to your ~/.profile

PKG_PATH=ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.8/packages/i386/
export PKG_PATH

Now you won't need to export the package path manually everytime you login to the machine.

Installing fluxbox

You can either use port or package install.

Port Install

shell>cd /usr/ports/x11/fluxbox; make install

Package Install

shell>pkg_add ${PKG_PATH}fluxbox-0.9.13.tgz

Fluxbox Configuration

If you plan to go for startx manually, you can just create .xinitrc under user home directory

shell>cd ~

shell>echo "exec /usr/local/bin/startfluxbox" > .xinitrc

shell>chmod u+x .xinitrc

Or if you are using xdm/gdm as a wrapper to launch startx, you should use .xsession

shell>echo "exec /usr/local/bin/startfluxbox" > .xsession

I suggest you copy all the files under /usr/local/share/fluxbox to you user home directory.

shell>cp -fR /usr/local/share/fluxbox/* ~/.fluxbox/

GDM Setup

If you prefer to use GDM - gnome display manager instead of xdm for it's nicer and rocking interface, let's go get it.

Port Install

shell>cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome/gdm; make install

Package Install

shell>pkg_add ${PKG_PATH}gdm-2.6.0.9.tgz

After the installation, edit the /etc/rc and change the part below. Or if you are good in sed, you may be able to do it quicky with s/xdm/gdm/g

# Alternatively, on some architectures, xdm may be started in /etc/ttys.
if [ "X${xdm_flags}" != X"NO" ]; then
echo 'starting xdm...'; /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm ${xdm_flags}
fi

to

# Alternatively, on some architectures, xdm may be started in /etc/ttys.
if [ "X${gdm_flags}" != X"NO" ]; then
echo 'starting gdm...'; /usr/local/bin/gdm ${gdm_flags}
fi

Then, change the xdm_flags="" in /etc/rc.conf.local to gdm_flags=""

By now, you should be done :]

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice Tutorial! I love reading good tutorials like this one! Bravo my dear friend :).

Anonymous said...

shell>cp -fR /usr/local/share/fluxbox/* ~/.fluxbox/

should just read, without the * sign.
shell>cp -fR /usr/local/share/fluxbox/ ~/.fluxbox/

Anonymous said...

if the .fluxbox dir not yet exist

Anonymous said...

Thankyou for this, lifesaver!

and time saver!

Anonymous said...

double Wo0ts to you for
saving me time and frustrations !
Excellent tut.

Anonymous said...

Thanks! This was very useful!

Anonymous said...

Nice, Thanks

Beta said...

I want to install fluxbox on my OpenBSD. thanks are guided on how to install.