Xsession.options(5)

✨ Xsession.options(5) ✨

File Formats Manual 📖 Hey bestie, this is the manual page for Xsession.options (section 5). Let's get into it 💅

🦋 NAME

Xsession.options, Xsession.options.d — configuration options for Xsession(5) 💖

🌸 DESCRIPTION

okay so /etc/X11/Xsession.options and /etc/X11/Xsession.options.d/*.conf are where you put the options that control some of the behavior of the Xsession(5) Bourne shell (sh(1)) script 🧚 the way that these files are the boss of your X session startup, literally iconic. For more info, check the Xsession(5) manpage 💜

These files can have comments, which start with a hash mark (#) and go until the next newline, just like comments in shell scripts 🙈 Everything else is an option, written as words separated by hyphens, with only one option per line 🎀 To turn an option on, you just put it in the file. To turn it off, you stick no- in front of the name 💅

Options get read from /etc/X11/Xsession.options first, then from /etc/X11/Xsession.options.d/*.conf in sorted order. Later mentions of an option (with or without the no- prefix) win over earlier ones, so the last word is the final word 👑

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• allow-failsafe — ngl this one is a lifesaver 🚑 If the failsafe argument gets passed to the Xsession script, you get an emergency X session with just an x-terminal-emulator(1) chilling in the upper-left hand corner of the screen 🌈 No window manager gets started. And if there's no x-terminal-emulator program available, the session just exits immediately 💀
• allow-user-resources — if users have a file called .Xresources in their home directories, those resources get merged with the default X resources when they log in 🌸
• allow-user-xsession — if users have an executable file called .xsession in their home directories, it can be used as the startup program for the X session (see Xsession(5)) ✨ If the file is there but not executable, it can still be used, but it's assumed to be a Bourne shell script and gets run with sh(1) 🦋
• use-session-dbus — if the dbus package is installed, the session bus gets activated at X session launch 🔥
• use-ssh-agent — if the ssh-agent(1) program is available and no agent process seems to be running already, the X session gets invoked by exec'ing ssh-agent with the startup command, instead of running the startup command directly 🔐

All of the options above are enabled by default 💖 The local administrator can support additional options too, and Xsession(5) explains how that works 🧚

🎀 AUTHORS

Stephen Early, Mark Eichin, and Branden Robinson developed Debian's X session handling scripts 💜 Branden Robinson wrote this manual page 🫶

💌 SEE ALSO

Xsession(5), ssh-agent(1), x-terminal-emulator(1) ⭐

Debian Project 🌈 manual page from 2004-10-31, Xsession.options(5), signing off with love 🦋💖✨