Tribblix: manual page: startx.1

STARTX(1) User Commands STARTX(1)

NAME

startx - initialize an X session

SYNOPSIS

startx [ [ client ] options ... ] [ -- [ server ] [ display ] options
... ]

DESCRIPTION

The startx script is a front end to xinit(1) that provides a somewhat
nicer user interface for running a single session of the X Window
System. It is often run with no arguments.

Arguments immediately following the startx command are used to start
a client in the same manner as xinit(1). The special argument '--'
marks the end of client arguments and the beginning of server
options. It may be convenient to specify server options with startx
to change them on a per-session basis. Some examples of specifying
server arguments follow; consult the manual page for your X server to
determine which arguments are legal.

startx -- -depth 16

startx -- -dpi 100

startx -- -layout Multihead

To determine the client to run, startx first checks the environment
variable XINITRC for a filename. If that variable is unset, or does
not contain a filename, it looks for a file called .xinitrc in the
user's home directory. If that is not found, it uses the file
xinitrc in the xinit library directory. If command line client
options are given, they override this behavior and revert to the
xinit(1) behavior. To determine the server to run, startx checks the
environment variable XSERVERRC for a filename. If that variable is
unset, or does not contain a filename, it looks for a file called
.xserverrc in the user's home directory. If that is not found, it
uses the file xserverrc in the xinit library directory. If command
line server options are given, they override this behavior and revert
to the xinit(1) behavior. Users rarely need to provide a .xserverrc
file. See the xinit(1) manual page for more details on the
arguments.

The system-wide xinitrc and xserverrc files are found in the
/etc/X11/xinit directory.

The .xinitrc is typically a shell script which starts many clients
according to the user's preference. When this shell script exits,
startx kills the server and performs any other session shutdown
needed. Most of the clients started by .xinitrc should be run in the
background. The last client should run in the foreground; when it
exits, the session will exit. People often choose a session manager,
window manager, or xterm as the ''magic'' client.

EXAMPLE

Below is a sample .xinitrc that starts several applications and
leaves the window manager running as the ''last'' application.
Assuming that the window manager has been configured properly, the
user then chooses the ''Exit'' menu item to shut down X.

xrdb -load $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid gray &
xbiff -geometry -430+5 &
oclock -geometry 75x75-0-0 &
xload -geometry -80-0 &
xterm -geometry +0+60 -ls &
xterm -geometry +0-100 &
xconsole -geometry -0+0 -fn 5x7 &
exec twm

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

DISPLAY This variable gets set to the name of the
display to which clients should connect.
Note that this gets set, not read.

XAUTHORITY This variable, if not already defined, gets
set to $(HOME)/.Xauthority. This is to
prevent the X server, if not given the -auth
argument, from automatically setting up
insecure host-based authentication for the
local host. See the Xserver(1) and
Xsecurity(7) manual pages for more
information on X client/server
authentication.

XINITRC This variable should contain the location of
an xinitrc file. If unset, $(HOME)/.xinitrc
or /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc will be used.

XSERVERRC This variable should contain the location of
an xserver file. If unset, $(HOME)/.xinitrc
or /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc will be used.

FILES