This might be a stupid question, as I’m not familiar with GUIX/Nix and am unlikely to be able to help, but what happens when you try to run LXQt from the CLI (assuming you are able to get that far)?
I haven’t tried to be honest, since it defeats the entire purpose of fucking around with Guix. I made a few posts on this, but I just fuck around with VMs when I haven’t done a “technical” activity to avoid feeling like a useless jackass, and one of the distros I wanted to learn about is Guix.
If I want to run guix install lxqt I can. But why would I want to use Guix to have a user with a certain desktop environment? I want to be able to set up machines at the drop of a hat that are all the same all the time, and I want the machine to be all the same, not the user.
Well from a glance the config looks fine. I looked at the documentation but there’s not a lot of information on what the lxqt service actually includes. My first guess as to why it drops you to a tty is that perhaps it doesn’t include a display manager.
Edit: actually nevermind, you’re appending to %desktop-services and i’m pretty sure that includes gdm. Maybe the problem lies in gdm trying to use wayland by default. There’s an option to change that, i’ll see if i can find it.
I’m not sure if wayland is actually the problem though, especially if gdm was working fine before you swapped to lxqt. Another thing i’m thinking of is maybe lxqt isn’t properly exposing a session file to gdm, and perhaps gdm crashes because it doesn’t find any sessions to start. I think i’ve seen other people adding this session file manually but i would have to look up how it’s done. The thing is i don’t use a DE myself, and i’m using greetd+gtkgreet as a display manager and it just launches me into a tty, and then my bash_profile has a snippet that checks which tty i’m and whether it’s empty, and if it is it launches my wayland compositor of choice.
thanks for trying. I did that, I get to the login, and then I get a mouse and a black screen after the login still. I basically did (more or less):
before
(services
(append (list (service xfce-desktop-service-type)
;; To configure OpenSSH, pass an 'openssh-configuration'
;; record as a second argument to'service' below.
(service openssh-service-type)
(set-xorg-configuration
(xorg-configuration (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout))))
;; This is the default list of services we
;; are appending to.
%desktop-services))
after
(services
(append (list (service lxqt-desktop-service-type)
;; To configure OpenSSH, pass an 'openssh-configuration'
;; record as a second argument to'service' below.
(service openssh-service-type)
(set-xorg-configuration
(xorg-configuration (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout))))
;; This is the default list of services we
;; are appending to.
(modify-services %desktop-services
(gdm-service-type config =>
(gdm-configuration
(inherit config)
(wayland? #f)
)
)
)
))
Hmm, that does look correct and if it reconfigured without errors it’s probably alright. Another thing you could try is run ls /var/log and see if there’s an entry for gdm. If there is you could cat the log file and see what it says
Hmm, i don’t know if the qxl error is the cause of this, but i’m pretty sure that’s related to the video settings for your VM. Maybe you could try one of the other options like virtio to see if that works?
What error are you getting? Does it reconfigure succesfully?
If it does reconfigure successfully, it just gives a blank screen, or takes me to the terminal login prompt instead of a GUI login prompt.
I tried other things and it fails after hours of downloading packages and building. Does it seem right to you? What do you think I might be missing?
This might be a stupid question, as I’m not familiar with GUIX/Nix and am unlikely to be able to help, but what happens when you try to run LXQt from the CLI (assuming you are able to get that far)?
I haven’t tried to be honest, since it defeats the entire purpose of fucking around with Guix. I made a few posts on this, but I just fuck around with VMs when I haven’t done a “technical” activity to avoid feeling like a useless jackass, and one of the distros I wanted to learn about is Guix.
If I want to run guix install lxqt I can. But why would I want to use Guix to have a user with a certain desktop environment? I want to be able to set up machines at the drop of a hat that are all the same all the time, and I want the machine to be all the same, not the user.
Well from a glance the config looks fine. I looked at the documentation but there’s not a lot of information on what the lxqt service actually includes. My first guess as to why it drops you to a tty is that perhaps it doesn’t include a display manager.
Edit: actually nevermind, you’re appending to
%desktop-servicesand i’m pretty sure that includes gdm. Maybe the problem lies in gdm trying to use wayland by default. There’s an option to change that, i’ll see if i can find it.thanks so much. The documentation that I’ve glanced just makes it seem so easy, “just replace X with Y and nothing more!”
I’m not sure if this will work, but what you can try is replacing the
%desktop-serviceswith this:(modify-services %desktop-services (gdm-service-type config => (gdm-configuration (inherit config) (wayland? #f))))I’m not sure if wayland is actually the problem though, especially if gdm was working fine before you swapped to lxqt. Another thing i’m thinking of is maybe lxqt isn’t properly exposing a session file to gdm, and perhaps gdm crashes because it doesn’t find any sessions to start. I think i’ve seen other people adding this session file manually but i would have to look up how it’s done. The thing is i don’t use a DE myself, and i’m using greetd+gtkgreet as a display manager and it just launches me into a tty, and then my bash_profile has a snippet that checks which tty i’m and whether it’s empty, and if it is it launches my wayland compositor of choice.
I’ll give it a go at some point and get back to you in this thread and share what happened. Thanks for this advice anyway.
thanks for trying. I did that, I get to the login, and then I get a mouse and a black screen after the login still. I basically did (more or less):
before
(services (append (list (service xfce-desktop-service-type) ;; To configure OpenSSH, pass an 'openssh-configuration' ;; record as a second argument to 'service' below. (service openssh-service-type) (set-xorg-configuration (xorg-configuration (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout)))) ;; This is the default list of services we ;; are appending to. %desktop-services))after
(services (append (list (service lxqt-desktop-service-type) ;; To configure OpenSSH, pass an 'openssh-configuration' ;; record as a second argument to 'service' below. (service openssh-service-type) (set-xorg-configuration (xorg-configuration (keyboard-layout keyboard-layout)))) ;; This is the default list of services we ;; are appending to. (modify-services %desktop-services (gdm-service-type config => (gdm-configuration (inherit config) (wayland? #f) ) ) ) ))Hmm, that does look correct and if it reconfigured without errors it’s probably alright. Another thing you could try is run
ls /var/logand see if there’s an entry for gdm. If there is you could cat the log file and see what it saysIt looks like there are some device failures and it’s missing
(EE) Failed to load module "qxl" (module does not exist, 0)Full log : https://pastebin.com/9YDiEpiN
once again thanks for your time and efforts. I appreciate your help.
Hmm, i don’t know if the qxl error is the cause of this, but i’m pretty sure that’s related to the video settings for your VM. Maybe you could try one of the other options like virtio to see if that works?