New question on Mate and FreeBSD

[Baho Utot]

On 04/25/17 08:22, Polytropon wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Apr 2017 17:25:11 -0400, James B. Byrne wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, April 24, 2017 16:45, Polytropon wrote:
>>> On Mon, 24 Apr 2017 16:10:10 -0400, James B. Byrne via
>>> freebsd-questions wrote:
>>>> How does one drop out of slim to the console? I installed FreeBSD-11
>>>> on a spare laptop and I am having some difficulty logging on through
>>>> slim.  I have installed mate and slim but when I run slim it prompts
>>>> for a login and then fails with 'unable to execute login'; or
>>>> something similar.
>>>>
>>>> However when this happens I do not know how to get out of the
>>>> graphical logon screen without rebooting the system.
>>>
>>> Solution A: switch consoles with Ctrl+Alt+PF1 / PF2 / PF3 / ...
>>>
>>> Solution B: do A, followed by "killall -9 slim"
>>>
>>> This of course doesn't work anymore when you're using sc "as"
>>> the console driver, so you must use "vt". This _might_ indtroduce
>>> new problems with character sizes, fonts, and locale support. :-)
>>>
>>> Sidenote: In normal text mode, you use Alt+PF1 / PF2 / PF3 / ...
>>> to switch between the virtual consoles, the "Print / Sys Rq" key
>>> can be used to iterate through the consoles.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> My usual practice on CentOS is to configure the host to boot into text
>> mode and then run startx from the console to start the graphical
>> desktop.
> 
> This can also be done on FreeBSD. Both a display manager and
> the actual X session (running a window manager or a whole desktop
> environment) can be initiated from the text mode.
> 
> 
> 
>> I have installed mate on the FreeBSD system but cannot seem
>> to hit upon the correct manner to start it.  Well, it sort of starts
>> but what shows up is not recognisable as desktop.  This is just
>> ignorance on my part.  I had similar problems when I decided to use
>> mate instead of gnome when I was testing RHEL/CentOS7.
> 
> I have recently switched an installation of a Gnome 2 "destroyed
> by update" to MATE (and slim instead of gdm), now ~/.xinitrc and
> ~/.xsession get honored as expected. Interestingly, some of the
> Gnome settings were "inherited", but others needed to be set up
> manually.
> 
> 
> 
>> Does PF1 == F1 (function key 1) or does this refer to something else?
> 
> Sorry, that's my typical "IBM speak": The name PF key refers to
> the correct term "programmable function key", but PF1 and F1 are
> exactly the same thing. Must be the result of using a keyboard
> where the actual labels were PF1, PF2, and so on... ;-)
> 
> 
> 

add this to .shrc in your home directory....

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) == /dev/ttyv0 ]; then
	startx
fi