STARTX(1) General Commands Manual STARTX(1)
NAME
startx - initialize an X session
SYNOPSIS
startx [ [ client ] options ... ] [ -- [ server ] [ display ] options
... ]
DESCRIPTION
The startx script is a front end to xinit(1) that provides a somewhat
nicer user interface for running a single session of the X Window Sys-
tem. It is often run with no arguments.
Arguments immediately following the startx command are used to start a
client in the same manner as xinit(1). The special argument '--' marks
the end of client arguments and the beginning of server options. It
may be convenient to specify server options with startx to change on a
per-session basis the default color depth, the server's notion of the
number of dots-per-inch the display device presents, or take advantage
of a different server layout, as permitted by the Xorg(1) server and
specified in the xorg.conf(5) configuration. Some examples of specify-
ing server arguments follow; consult the manual page for your X server
to determine which arguments are legal.
startx -- -depth 16
startx -- -dpi 100
startx -- -layout Multihead
Note that in the Debian system, what many people traditionally put in
the .xinitrc file should go in .xsession instead; this permits the same
X environment to be presented whether startx, xdm, or xinit is used to
start the X session. All discussion of the .xinitrc file in the
xinit(1) manual page applies equally well to .xsession. Keep in mind
that .xinitrc is used only by xinit(1) and completely ignored by
xdm(1).
To determine the client to run, startx looks for the following files,
in order:
$(HOME)/.startxrc
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sys.startxrc
$(HOME)/.xinitrc
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
If command line client options are given, they override this behavior
and revert to the xinit(1) behavior. To determine the server to run,
startx first looks for a file called .xserverrc in the user's home di-
rectory. If that is not found, it uses the file xserverrc in the xinit
library directory. If command line server options are given, they
override this behavior and revert to the xinit(1) behavior. Users
rarely need to provide a .xserverrc file. See the xinit(1) manual page
for more details on the arguments.
The system-wide xinitrc and xserverrc files are found in the
/etc/X11/xinit directory.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
DISPLAY This variable gets set to the name of the dis-
play to which clients should connect. Note
that this gets set, not read.
XAUTHORITY This variable, if not already defined, gets
set to $(HOME)/.Xauthority. This is to pre-
vent the X server, if not given the -auth ar-
gument, from automatically setting up insecure
host-based authentication for the local host.
See the Xserver(1) and Xsecurity(7) manual
pages for more information on X client/server
authentication.
FILES
$(HOME)/.xinitrc Client to run. Typically a shell script which
runs many programs in the background.
$(HOME)/.xserverrc Server to run. The default is X.
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc Client to run if the user has no .xinitrc
file.
/etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc Server to run if the user has no .xserverrc
file.
SEE ALSO
xinit(1), X(7), Xserver(1), Xorg(1), xorg.conf(5)
X Version 11 xinit 1.4.0 STARTX(1)
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