Running X from startx and making automount work
I don't use a DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT on Linux - I boot to a console and start X11 via the startx command.
This runs commands from ~/.xinitrc
xrdb -load ~/.Xdefaults setxkbmap -layout gb xset s noblank xset s noexpose xset -dpms ~/bin/background.sh & dwmblocks & xfce4-power-manager & pasystray & nm-applet & exec dwm
My window manager is DWM and I don't want/need all the extra stuff of a desktop environment
I would however like to be able to automount external USB drives rather than what I do currently
sudo dmesg #find drive device sudo mount /dev/xxxx /mnt
then copy files as necessary between /mnt/xxxxx and the machine's filesystem
Afterwards….
cd sudo sync sudo umount /mnt
I installed Thunar along with gvfs and all the additional stuff I thought I needed (gvfs-backends* etc).
But Thunar complained that it appears you don't have gvfs or similar…
I briefly tried installing the MATE Desktop environment - and then spent a long time forcing it to use DWM as window manager, and turning off as much as I could
cajamate-paneldconf-editor to make dwm start as window manager….
Then Thunar was happy with gvfs and would automount a USB drive (or more importantly my Swiss Micros calculator's USB drive).
But I wasn't happy with this as a solution - too messy and too much crap going on - messing up the appearance of GTK-aware apps like claws-mail and GNUCASH
I wanted to get back to simply running DWM etc. without all the rest
It appears the issue is that with my method of starting X via ~/.xinitrc I fail to correctly start DBUS. This needs to be started correctly in the setting up of an X-session
The answer isn't to add an invocation of DBUS into my ~/.xinitrc as I first thought.
The answer is to let X11 start via the SYSTEM xinitrc which only happens as long as I don't have my own ~/.xinitrc
Starting X this way which will then run various other things, including DBUS, as the XSession is spun-up via startx
Then the process is finished by running my file ~/.xsession - which is actually just my ~/.xinitrc file renamed to ~/.xsession.
I found this at https://momi.ca/posts/2021-10-11-startxdebian/ which describes my own situation perfectly, and the solution works perfectly.
I can still boot into a console session, and use startx to switch to DWM - and automount works for Thunar
Updated : 16/02/26 08:40 GMT