dde-seatd-launch(1)

💅 dde-seatd-launch — like, the whole manual, bestie

okay so real quick: this is the manual page for dde-seatd-launch(1) from the General Commands Manual, and honestly? she's a little icon. let's get into it ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

dde-seatd-launch — starts a process with its own dde-seatd instance. yes, her own private one. main character energy fr 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

dde-seatd-launch [options] [--] command

that's it. that's the whole vibe check. <italic>options</italic> go first, then your <italic>command</italic>, and the -- is there in case your command is feeling spicy and looks like an option 🎀

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -l <loglevel> — the log-level you wanna pass along to dde-seatd. wanna know what log-levels actually exist? go read dde-seatd(1), she's got the lore 👑
• -h — shows the help message and then dips. bye bestie 🫶
• -v — shows the version number and quits. that's it, that's the whole job 💖

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so here's what actually happens, step by step, no cap:

dde-seatd-launch starts up a dde-seatd instance with a dedicated socket path (hers, hers alone 🎀), waits for it to be ready, and then starts the specified <italic>command</italic> with SEATD_SOCK set appropriately. and the moment your command terminates? the dde-seatd instance gets terminated too. ride or die, literally 😭

now, the important part: dde-seatd requires root privileges to do its little tasks. you can get there two ways — through SUID on dde-seatd-launch, or by just running dde-seatd-launch as root. dde-seatd-launch will drop privileges from the effective user to the real user before running the specified command. if the real user is root, this is simply a noop (nothing happens, it's giving "no thoughts head empty" 💀).

⚠️ heads up bestie: you should only run dde-seatd-launch as root if you actually intend for the specified command to run as root as well. like, don't do it by accident. that's not the vibe. 🙈

so why does this exist instead of just using the libseat "builtin" backend? dde-seatd-launch serves a similar purpose, but she's superior to it for two reasons, and I'm obsessed:

1. The specified command never runs as root 👑
2. The standard dde-seatd executable and DDE libseat-compatible backend is used 🌈

both reasons. both. periodt.

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🌟 EXIT STATUS 🌟

dde-seatd-launch exits with the status of its child. that's it, she's just reporting back 🍓

when the child terminates on a signal N, dde-seatd-launch exits with the status 128 + N. the math is mathing, don't worry.

if dde-seatd-launch fails because of some other error, it exits with a non-zero status. so like, if it's not zero, something went sideways 💀

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

• The DDE libseat-compatible library
• <libseat.h>
• dde-seatd(1)

go read the siblings, iykyk 💖

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⭐ AUTHORS ⭐

maintained by Kenny Levinsen <contact@kl.wtf>, who is assisted by other open-source contributors (the whole squad 🫶). for more information about seatd development, see https://sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/seatd.

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aaaand that's the page!! 🎀 this version of the manual is dated 2026-07-28, and yeah, she's from the dde-seatd-launch(1) pages, General Commands Manual section, mwah 💋 slay, go launch something.