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 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.
+[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.
 When using [[elogind]], seatd is not required and viceversa. Don't add both to auto-start.
@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 == Configuration ==
-Seatd is the light weight solution for [[sway]] and other [[Wayland]] compositors compared to [[elogind]]. When using seatd, few mandatory steps  are to be performed.
+When seatd is used with [[Wayland]], ensure that the following two mandatory steps are completed.
-=== Configure XDG_RUNTIME_DIR ===
+* Set the variable [[XDG_RUNTIME_DIR]].
-Set the variable [[XDG_RUNTIME_DIR]]. This step is required for all [[Wayland]] compositors.
+* The following environment variables needs to be set:
+ <code>XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland</code>
+ <code>LIBSEAT_BACKEND=seatd</code>
+ <code>XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway</code>
-=== Environment variables ===
+The variable <code>XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP</code> must be suitably adjusted if a different [[:Category:Compositor|Compositor]] is used.
-Additional environment variables needs to be set for all [[Wayland]] compositors to work properly with seatd:
-* <code>XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland</code>
-* <code>LIBSEAT_BACKEND=seatd</code>
-* <code>XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway</code>
-The variable <code>XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP</code> must be suitably adjusted for other [[:Category:Compositor|Compositors]].
+== Seatd and sway ==
-=== Seatd and Sway ===
+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)
-When using seatd, [[sway]] must be started with above [[#Environment variables|Environment variables]] and [[D-Bus]] as shown below:
+if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
+     exec dbus-run-session sway
-{{Cat|~/.profile|<nowiki>
-# Environment variables required for seatd
-export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland
-export LIBSEAT_BACKEND=seatd
-export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway
-export XDG_VTNR=$(basename "$(tty)" | sed 's/tty//')
-#Start sway with DBUS (only in TTY1)
-if [ -z "$WAYLAND_DISPLAY" ] && [ "$XDG_VTNR" -eq 1 ]; then
-    exec dbus-run-session sway
 fi
-</nowiki>}}
+...</nowiki>}}
-Ensure that your shell reads and executes the '''if''' condition in {{Path|.profile}}. Sway can also be launched with a [[Sway#Starting_sway|wrapper script]] with seatd. If using [[elogind]], then none of the above code snippets are required.
+Instead of depending on {{Path|.profile}} or their equivalent files a [[Sway#Starting_sway|wrapper script]] can also be used.
 == See Also ==
 * [https://man.sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/seatd/ seatd documentation]
 * [https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Setting-environmental-variables sway wiki]