Seatd: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 12:15, 16 August 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.

Prerequisites

Seatd requires that XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is set before starting your Wayland compositor.

Installation

Install the seatd package:

# apk add seatd

Configuration

Service management

To add the seatd service to auto-start using OpenRC:

# rc-update add seatd # rc-service seatd start

To add the currently logged in user to seat group issue the command:

$ doas adduser $USER seat

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

Polkit

Polkit can be configured and used for authentication with seatd with certain limitations. Since seatd doesn't provide detailed session tracking, polkit rules that rely on these properties (e.g., subject.active, subject.local) cannot be evaluated. Hence graphical, session-aware polkit authentication agents are not supported.

Refer to sample polkit rule file that works with seatd.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-Seatd is a seat manager and provides user sessions (mostly compositors) with access to input and output devices.
+{{Verified|0}}[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.
-= Installation =
+== Prerequisites ==
- apk add seatd       # install seatd
+* Seatd requires that [[XDG_RUNTIME_DIR]] is set before starting your [[Wayland]] compositor.
- rc-update add seatd # configure it to auto-start
- service seatd start # start it now
+== Installation ==
- adduser $USER seat  # allow current user to access seatd
+Install the {{Pkg|seatd}} package:{{Cmd|# apk add {{Pkg|seatd}}}}
+== Configuration ==
+=== Service management ===
+To add the {{ic|seatd}} service to auto-start using [[OpenRC]]: {{Cmd|<nowiki># rc-update add seatd
+# rc-service seatd start </nowiki>}}
+To add the currently logged in user to {{ic|seat}} group issue the command: {{Cmd|$ doas adduser $USER seat}}
+If you are already logged in as a <code>$USER</code>, you will need to relogin.
+=== Polkit ===
+[[Polkit#Using polkit with seatd|Polkit]] can be configured and used for authentication with seatd with certain limitations. Since seatd doesn't provide detailed session tracking, polkit rules that rely on these properties (e.g., subject.active, subject.local) cannot be evaluated. Hence graphical, session-aware [[Polkit#Authentication agents|polkit authentication agents]] are not supported.
+Refer to [[Polkit#Example1|sample polkit rule file]] that works with seatd.
+== See also ==
+* [https://man.sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/seatd/ seatd documentation]
+* [https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Setting-environmental-variables sway wiki]
+[[Category:Seat_manager]]