Xfce XDM fails to start XFCE4

[lattimro]

Hi FreeBSD Community,

I installed FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE-p1 with xfce DE and xdm as a login manager. When I enter my credentials it blinks "successful" but then fails.
I followed this Sec 5.7.3 and I was only able to start xfce DE from ttyX by typing

startx

. This should be good enough for now but I am just wonder if this issue can be fixed?
Thanks!

PS: I just check /var/log/xdm.log (see below)

 

[YYY__]

Something like:

ee ~/.dmrc
   [Desktop]
   Session = xfce

Check /var/log and ~/.xsession-errors in any case. I just shoot quickly.

 

[lattimro]

~/.xsession-errors reports it
can not open /usr/local/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc: No such file or directory

but the file exists:

 

[jmos]

As far I can read XDM doesn't fail - and does its job completely. But there seems to be no user session defined, and so you're getting back to the login screen. Just create a file ~/.xsession, and write in there the start command(s) of your desktop; In case of Xfce that might be /usr/local/bin/startxfce4.

Take a look into the directory /usr/local/etc/X11/xdm/ to get more information about how XDM raises a user session - it is done by simple script files. Also read man xdm.

 

[YYY__]

That sounds really good. I completely forgot about ~/.xinitrc. LightDM handles that situation well.
You can also use startxfce4 as described in this guide (applied to XDM/.xsession).
Try:

echo "exec /usr/local/bin/startxfce4 --with-ck-launch" > ~/.xsession
chmod 700 ~/.xsession

 

[lattimro]

Thanks so much guys! It works fine now after I updated ~/.xsession with ". /usr/local/bin/startxfce4"

Initially I just followed the manual: