[mythtv-users] Replacing KDE with Ratpoison

Phill Edwards phill_edwards at hotmail.com
Thu Dec 9 13:32:18 UTC 2004


Thanks for help everyone. I the end I took Nate's script and made a v small 
mod as he outlined. My .xsession is as follows:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset s noblank
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset s off
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset -dpms s off
irexec --daemon /home/mythtv/.mythtv/lircrc
exec /usr/bin/ratpoison
mythfrontend

This is only slightly different to Nate's in the last 2 lines - ratpoison is 
exec'd and mythfrontend is just run with no ampersand. This means that I can 
exit out of mythfrontend back to the window manager which is good because 
then the automatic shutdown/nvram-wakeup stuff can run. Also, it means I can 
do maintenance work etc from the window manager by calling up an xterm for 
example. This solution seems to work exactly like KDE was working except 
it's running Ratpoison as the window manager.

I liked his solution best because it boots into runlevel 5 (X Windows) which 
means I can also get console windows up by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F2 
etc.

Lastly, without wishing to start any flame wars, I couldn't see much 
difference at all between CPU & memory usage when myth was idling between 
KDE or Ratpoison. I was expecting to be amazed at how much resources wee 
freed up, but there was very little in it.I can see the attraction of 
Ratpoison, though, for minimalists.

Regards,
Phill

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "nate s" <nate.strickland at gmail.com>
To: <papenfuss at vt.edu>; "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 7:14 AM
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Replacing KDE with Ratpoison


>I was just writing a script like this myself last night.  The way I
> did it was to use the ~/.xsession file, which gdm will execute if you
> choose "Custom Session," and start both ratpoison and mythfrontend
> there.  Also, notice that I started ratpoison with ratpoison &, and
> then started mythfrontend with exec mythfrontend.  What this means is
> that it will behave as if no window manager is there in that it will
> log you out to gdm when you exit mythfrontend, but it aviods the other
> problems of running myth without a windowmanager.  If you're having
> problems with mythfrontend crashing, you can change this by doing the
> exec on ratpoison rather than on mythfrontend (and you can do while
> true or whatever to keep myth alive)
>
> #!/bin/bash
> /usr/X11R6/bin/xset s noblank
> /usr/X11R6/bin/xset s off
> /usr/X11R6/bin/xset -dpms
> /usr/bin/ratpoison &
> exec mythfrontend
>
> just put that in ~/.xesssion, and make it executable, then you're set.


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