Seatd: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 16:26, 16 March 2025

Seatd is a seat management daemon, that does everything it needs to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Depends only on libc. Seat management takes care of mediating access to shared devices (graphics, input), without requiring the applications needing access to be root.

When using elogind, seatd is not required and viceversa. Don't add both to auto-start.

Installation

apk add seatd # install seatd rc-update add seatd # configure it to auto-start service seatd start # start it now adduser $USER seat # allow current user to access seatd

If you are already logged in as a $USER, you will need to relogin.

Configuration

When seatd is used with Wayland, ensure that the following two mandatory steps are completed.

Set the variable XDG_RUNTIME_DIR.
The following environment variables needs to be set:

XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland
LIBSEAT_BACKEND=seatd
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway

The variable XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP must be suitably adjusted if a different Compositor is used.

Seatd and sway

When using seatd, adding the following lines to ~/.profile or other shell specific profile file will launch Sway automatically with and D-Bus only in tty1.

Contents of ~/.profile

...
#start sway with DBUS (only in tty1) 
if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
     exec dbus-run-session sway 
fi
...

Instead of depending on .profile or their equivalent files a wrapper script can also be used.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-Seatd is a [[seat manager]] and provides user sessions (mostly compositors) with access to input and output devices.
+[https://man.sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/seatd/ Seatd] is a [[Seat manager|seat management]] daemon, that does everything it needs to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Depends only on libc. Seat management takes care of mediating access to shared devices (graphics, input), without requiring the applications needing access to be root.
-See [https://man.sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/seatd/ the seatd documentation] for further details.
+When using [[elogind]], seatd is not required and viceversa. Don't add both to auto-start.
-When using [[elogind]], seatd is not required and viceversa.
+== Installation ==
-= Installation =
 {{Cmd|apk add {{Pkg|seatd}}       # install seatd
@@ Line 15: / Line 13: @@
 If you are already logged in as a <code>$USER</code>, you will need to relogin.
-= Seatd and Sway =
+== Configuration ==
-seatd is the light weight solution for [[sway]] compared to [[elogind]]. To start [[sway]] manually with seatd following three things are necessary:
-== Configuring XDG_RUNTIME_DIR ==
-Set the variable [[XDG_RUNTIME_DIR]].
-== Environement variables ==
+When seatd is used with [[Wayland]], ensure that the following two mandatory steps are completed.
-Additional environement variables needs to be set properly for [[sway]] to work properly, if started manually.
-{{Cat|~/.profile|<nowiki>
+* Set the variable [[XDG_RUNTIME_DIR]].
-#Environment variables required for sway to work with seatd
+* The following environment variables needs to be set:
-export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland
+ <code>XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland</code>
-export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway
+ <code>LIBSEAT_BACKEND=seatd</code>
-export LIBSEAT_BACKEND=seatd
+ <code>XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway</code>
-</nowiki>}}
-If you are planning to use [[Greetd]], a light weight login manager instead of {{Pkg|gdm}} or [[SDDM]] the below section does not apply. However the above two sections are still needed.
+The variable <code>XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP</code> must be suitably adjusted if a different [[:Category:Compositor|Compositor]] is used.
-== start sway+seatd manually with D-Bus ==
+== Seatd and sway ==
-When using seatd, [[sway]] must be started with [[D-Bus]] so that [[PipeWire]] and other such [[D-Bus]] dependenant services can work without issues.
+When using seatd, adding the following lines to {{Path|~/.profile}} or other shell specific profile file will launch Sway automatically with and [[D-Bus]] only in tty1. {{Cat|~/.profile|<nowiki>...
+#start sway with DBUS (only in tty1)
-{{Cat|~/.profile|<nowiki>
+if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
-#Start sway with DBUS (Manual method)
+     exec dbus-run-session sway
-if [ -z "$WAYLAND_DISPLAY" ] && [ "$XDG_VTNR" -eq 1 ]; then
-    exec dbus-run-session sway -d 2> ~/sway_error.log
 fi
-</nowiki>}}
+...</nowiki>}}
+Instead of depending on {{Path|.profile}} or their equivalent files a [[Sway#Starting_sway|wrapper script]] can also be used.
-Ensure that your shell reads and executes the above if condition in .profile. {{Pkg|bash}} works with the above code. For other shells, make necessary changes.
+== See Also ==
-If you are using [[elogind]] then the above code snippets are not required.
+* [https://man.sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/seatd/ seatd documentation]
+* [https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Setting-environmental-variables sway wiki]
 [[Category:Desktop]]
 [[Category:Seat_manager]]
-[[Category:Sway]]
 [[Category:Wayland]]