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
System. 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
specifying 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
To determine the client to run, startx first looks for a file called
.xinitrc in the user’s home directory. If that is not found, it uses
the file xinitrc in the xinit library directory.
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
directory. 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
display 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
prevent the X server, if not given the -auth
argument, 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)