Friday, 24 December 2021
06:39 PM
Monthly Report - November [blogs.perl.org] 06:39 PM, Friday, 24 December 2021 02:00 PM, Friday, 24 December 2021
Time to relax before ...
What a shame, I delayed the Monthy Report once again. Although I did manage to publish last month on time i.e. 4th Nov.
Do I have reason to justify the delay?
Well, December, is always the busiest month. It is the month when I spend more time with family than ususal. Also I was busy with the Advent Calendar 2021.
As you must have guessed, today I am done with the final gift. Hence, the monthly report is getting time. There was another reason for the delay as I started Live Coding again. I have done few, which I will talk about in the end of year report in a week time, insha-ALLAH.
So, what was the highlight of last month?
I started the 1000 days FREE T-shirt campaign. I am so grateful for all the support that I received so far. It feels great. I decided to gift FREE specially designed T-shirt to all the champions of The Weekly Challenge. I am done with the most difficult phase of the campaign i.e. collecting funds. Thanks to all the sponsors, we have collected £1029.64 in total. The fund is enough to cover the cost of T-shirt printing and international delivery as per my own estimation.
As of today, I have received 32 confirmations out of 53 eligible members. I am not in a rush to be honest. I would want to gift each and every eligible members unless anyone says the opposite. I am hoping after the holiday break they will find time to respond to my email request. You can find the regular update to the campaign in the blog here.
I find it hard to remember what I did last month, every time the monthly report gets delayed. Never mind, I will cover up in the annual report in a week time if I remember anything later.
I wish you all Merry Christmas and stay safe with your loved ones.
Let's take a quick look through last month main activities.
- Pull Request
- Git Commits
- The Weekly Challenge
- YouTube Channel
- Meet The Champion
- Pull Request Club
- Perl Blog
- Perl Weekly Newsletter
- Past Monthly Reports
- Patreon
Pull Request
5 Pull Requests submitted in the month of November 2021.
2374 Pull Requests altogether.
Git Commits
718 commits recorded in the month of November 2021.
Overall 8171 commits recorded in the year 2021.
The Weekly Challenge
Following weekly challenges proposed in the month of November 2021:
And RECAPS are listed as below:
- RECAP Challenge #136
- RECAP Challenge #137
- RECAP Challenge #138
- RECAP Challenge #139
- RECAP Challenge #140
YouTube Channel
Last month, none created. However, there are plenty of videos available on my YouTube Channel. If you like the video then please do subscribe to my channel so that you don't miss the weekly fun live coding videos.
Meet The Champion
Last month, we declared Paulo Custodio as the Champion of The Weekly Challenge.
If you are interested in past champions interview then you can find it all here.
Pull Request Club
Last month, I received Net::Songkick by Dave Cross. I submitted one Pull Request and it has been accepted and merged already.
Overall participation to Pull Request Club
Perl Blog
Last month, I blogged about the Monthly Report - October and The Weekly Challenge - 1000 days.
Perl Weekly Newsletter
Last month, I edited three editions of the Perl Weekly Newsletter i.e. Issue #536, Issue #538 and Issue #540.
Past Monthly Reports
Year 2021: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct.
Year 2020: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.
Year 2019: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.
Year 2018: May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.
Patreon
At the end of last month, November 2021, the following people / organisation supported me in the past or continued supporting me even today. I am humbled by their generosity.
Do you want to sponsor my work?
Please follow the Patreon page.
Thank You.
03:00 PM
Vincent Bernat: Automatic login with startx and systemd [Planet Debian] 03:00 PM, Friday, 24 December 2021 01:20 PM, Tuesday, 04 January 2022
If your workstation is using full-disk encryption, you may want to jump directly to your desktop environment after entering the passphrase to decrypt the disk. Many display managers like GDM and LightDM have an autologin feature. However, only GDM can run Xorg with standard user privileges.
Here is an alternative using startx and a
systemd service:
[Unit] Description=X11 session for bernat After=graphical.target systemd-user-sessions.service [Service] User=bernat WorkingDirectory=~ PAMName=login Environment=XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 TTYPath=/dev/tty8 StandardInput=tty UnsetEnvironment=TERM UtmpIdentifier=tty8 UtmpMode=user StandardOutput=journal ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/chvt 8 ExecStart=/usr/bin/startx -- vt8 -keeptty -verbose 3 -logfile /dev/null Restart=no [Install] WantedBy=graphical.target
Let me explain each block:
-
The unit starts after
systemd-user-sessions.service, which enables user logins after boot by removing the/run/nologinfile. -
With
User=bernat, the unit is started with the identity of the specified user. This implies thatXorgdoes not run with elevated privileges. -
With
PAMName=login, the executed process is registered as a PAM session for theloginservice, which includes pam_systemd. This module registers the session to the systemd login manager. To be effective, we also need to allocate a TTY withTTYPath=/dev/tty8. When the TTY is active, the user is granted additional access to local devices—notably display, sound, keyboard, mouse. These additional rights are needed to get Xorg working rootless.1 TheTERMenvironment variable is unset because it would be set tolinuxby systemd as a result of attaching the standard input to the TTY. Moreover, we informpam_systemdwe want an X11 session withEnvironment=XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11. Otherwise,logindconsiders the session idle unless it receives input on the TTY. Software relying on the idle hint fromlogindwould be ineffective.2 -
The
UtmpIdentifier=tty8andUtmpMode=userdirectives are just a nice addition to register the session in/var/run/utmp. -
The last step is to execute
Xorgthroughstartx. Forlogindto allowXorgto take control of the local devices,chvt 8switches to the allocated TTY.3StandardOutput=journal, combined with the-verbose 3 -logfile /dev/nullflags forXorg, puts the logs from the X server into the journal instead of using a file. While equal to the default value, theRestart=nodirective highlights we do not want this unit to be restarted. This ensures the loginless session is only available on boot. By default,startxrunsxinitrc. If you want to run Kodi instead, add/usr/bin/kodi-standalonebetweenstartxand--.
Drop this unit in
/etc/systemd/system/x11-autologin.service and enable
it with systemctl enable x11-autologin.service.
Xorg is now running rootless and logging into the journal.
After using it for a few months, I didn’t notice any
regression compared to LightDM with autologin.
-
For more information on how
logindprovides access to devices, see this blog post. The method names do not match the current implementation, but the concepts are still correct.Xorgtakes control of the session when the TTY is active. ↩︎ -
Xorg could change the type of the session itself after taking control of it, but it does not. ↩︎
-
There is some code in Xorg to do that, but it is executed too late and fails with:
xf86OpenConsole: VT_ACTIVATE failed: Operation not permitted. ↩︎