[BBB] Help creating a minimal, headless Awesome WM setup

General Discussion
1

Hello everyone,

I have been struggling with this setup and could really benefit from some expert advice. My most immediate goal is get a minimal install of Xorg running, with components of Xfce4 and the Awesome WM, on my BeagleBone Black. Afterwards, I was going to make it headless, so I can remote in from a (shudder) Windows machine.

No matter what I try, launching startx will immediately fail with no indication why. I couldn’t even find a generated Xorg log file. Xorg-server is definitely not liking something.


(EE)
(EE) Backtrace:
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
xinit: server error

Below is the process I used for my current setup. Initially I had installed the entire Xfce4 group package, as well as LightDM. Before I had completed that setup, I decided to uninstall those in favour of the following. Hopefully that has not messed something up. More likely I am just missing a key component or configuration step.

  1. Install Arch Linux ARM to micro-SD & boot off of the card
  2. Follow Install ArchLinux on BeagleBone Black (Updated)
  3. sudo pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-xrandr xfdesktop exo garcon thunar thunar-volman tumbler xfce4-panel xfce4-power-manager xfce4-session xfce4-settings awesome rofi st
  4. cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
  5. added exec awesome to the bottom of it
  6. added -nolisten local to the `xserverrc
  7. Followed this from the Xfce4 setup page from Arch Linux’s superb wiki site, to set awesome as my default WM
$ xfconf-query -c xfce4-session -p /sessions/Failsafe/Client0_Command -t string -sa xfsettingsd
$ xfconf-query -c xfce4-session -p /sessions/Failsafe/Client1_Command -t string -sa awesome
  1. Discovered I was missing this key piece:
    • sudo pacman -Sy xf86-video-fbdev
    • Setup a minimal /etc/X11/xorg.conf
#/etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default fbdev Device 0"
        Driver          "fbdev"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default fbdev Screen 0"
        Device          "Builtin Default fbdev Device 0"
        Monitor         "Builtin Default Monitor"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default Layout"
        Screen          "Builtin Default fbdev Screen 0"
EndSection

Oh I just recalled. The first time I ran startx, it complained about a missing .Xauthority, but then it created an empty file and I never saw the message again.

That is as far as I have made it thus far. Launching startx from the local console results in immediate failure. Hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

Eventually I would like for this to run headless, but right now I would settle for running.

2

Relinquish the BBB to pure headless, its a work horse not an HMI / GUI board. Try the other boards with mulitple cores, pick one that actually has a GPU you can use without buying a license.

3

I was hoping to start local first, as that was supposed to be easy. Then I could start using the board while I looked into how to setup the headless component.

Guess I will take your advice and look at the headless setup. Hopefully I have better luck. :crossed_fingers:

I’ll report back on how it goes.

@foxsquirrel

pick one that actually has a GPU you can use without buying a license

Are you talking about finding a GPU that the manufacturer already purchased the CODEC’s for?

4

Essentially graphics not rendered using CPU resources, thus GPU. It is a pretty common paradigm to not have the key parts of the SoC available to the general public and then sell a license to the large companies.