I3 on Major Hayden

Viewing Xorg logs with journalctl in Fedora

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I love being an early adopter and trudging off into the unknown. After all, that’s one of the best ways to learn new things and you end up improving the experience for everyone who comes behind you. However, things can get a little frustrating from time to time especially when your daily work dictates that your desktop works really well. 😉

Sway has been my desktop of choice for a few years and although it seems to work well, I ran into lots of issues with Wayland. It was easy to plot a course around most of these problems, but not all of them.

I’ve recently run back to safety with my old, trusty, i3 window manager in Xorg. Then I realized a few of my Xorg configuration weren’t taking effect and I couldn’t figure out how to isolate the Xorg logs in the system journal to narrow down the problem.

Skip to the end if you’re short on time or peruse the next section if you haven’t been deep in the innards of your system journal in a while. 🔍

Journal metadata

Every journal entry in journald has metadata attached to it which you can use to filter the logs. Most people know about filtering based on systemd services, like this:

> journalctl --boot --unit chronyd.service | head
systemd[1]: Starting chronyd.service - NTP client/server...
chronyd[2662]: chronyd version 4.6.1 starting (+CMDMON +NTP +REFCLOCK +RTC +PRIVDROP +SCFILTER +SIGND +ASYNCDNS +NTS +SECHASH +IPV6 +DEBUG)
chronyd[2662]: Using leap second list /usr/share/zoneinfo/leap-seconds.list
chronyd[2662]: Frequency -3.595 +/- 6.086 ppm read from /var/lib/chrony/drift
chronyd[2662]: Loaded seccomp filter (level 2)
systemd[1]: Started chronyd.service - NTP client/server.
chronyd[2662]: Added source 192.168.10.1
chronyd[2662]: Selected source 208.67.72.50 (2.fedora.pool.ntp.org)
chronyd[2662]: System clock TAI offset set to 37 seconds
chronyd[2662]: Selected source 173.73.96.68 (2.fedora.pool.ntp.org)

This command shows all of the messages from the chronyd service since the last boot. However, we can get much more specific with our filtering using other criteria.

Examining metadata

You can examine the metadata behind each log line with the json output in journalctl:

> journalctl --boot --unit chronyd.service -o json -n 1 | jq
{
 "_CMDLINE": "/usr/sbin/chronyd -F 2",
 "_SYSTEMD_CGROUP": "/system.slice/chronyd.service",
 "_MACHINE_ID": "xxxxx",
 "_UID": "990",
 "SYSLOG_TIMESTAMP": "Feb 16 13:55:59 ",
 "__SEQNUM_ID": "c94633ee6da2480ca4602ca6ab47f82a",
 "_PID": "2662",
 "PRIORITY": "6",
 "_HOSTNAME": "zorro",
 "_SYSTEMD_SLICE": "system.slice",
 "SYSLOG_FACILITY": "3",
 "_GID": "989",
 "_SYSTEMD_INVOCATION_ID": "156fce8836374564b01aeb6628160ccb",
 "__CURSOR": "s=c94633ee6da2480ca4602ca6ab47f82a;i=19fb3a;b=ed9e1fccb1744136a3d726bbf2425388;m=33abfdf67;t=62e47cbf2b72f;x=f9a8d4e3bc4fef30",
 "__MONOTONIC_TIMESTAMP": "13870554983",
 "_SOURCE_REALTIME_TIMESTAMP": "1739735759501027",
 "_TRANSPORT": "syslog",
 "_EXE": "/usr/sbin/chronyd",
 "_SYSTEMD_UNIT": "chronyd.service",
 "SYSLOG_IDENTIFIER": "chronyd",
 "_BOOT_ID": "ed9e1fccb1744136a3d726bbf2425388",
 "__REALTIME_TIMESTAMP": "1739735759501103",
 "__SEQNUM": "1702714",
 "_RUNTIME_SCOPE": "system",
 "SYSLOG_PID": "2662",
 "_CAP_EFFECTIVE": "2000400",
 "MESSAGE": "Selected source 173.73.96.68 (2.fedora.pool.ntp.org)",
 "_COMM": "chronyd",
 "_SELINUX_CONTEXT": "system_u:system_r:chronyd_t:s0"
}

The most helpful one for us is _COMM_. We can use it to limit our search solely to Xorg logs.

Every Xorg startup has a line with the Xorg version that looks like this: X.Org X Server 1.21.1.15. Let’s search for that:

> journalctl --boot -o json | grep -i "x.org x server" | jq
{
 "_HOSTNAME": "zorro",
 "_BOOT_ID": "ed9e1fccb1744136a3d726bbf2425388",
 "_SYSTEMD_INVOCATION_ID": "5cf933063b1246909d4ea15e7154bff4",
 "_MACHINE_ID": "xxxxx",
 "__CURSOR": "s=c94633ee6da2480ca4602ca6ab47f82a;i=19de06;b=ed9e1fccb1744136a3d726bbf2425388;m=4597347;t=62e2f4fcc855d;x=b4f482006e1523ff",
 "__MONOTONIC_TIMESTAMP": "72971079",
 "_SYSTEMD_SESSION": "2",
 "_SYSTEMD_SLICE": "user-1000.slice",
 "_SELINUX_CONTEXT": "system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023",
 "__SEQNUM_ID": "c94633ee6da2480ca4602ca6ab47f82a",
 "_AUDIT_LOGINUID": "1000",
 "__REALTIME_TIMESTAMP": "1739630597408093",
 "_CMDLINE": "/usr/libexec/Xorg vt2 -displayfd 3 -auth /run/user/1000/gdm/Xauthority -nolisten tcp -background none -noreset -keeptty -novtswitch -verbose 3",
 "_AUDIT_SESSION": "2",
 "_SYSTEMD_USER_SLICE": "-.slice",
 "__SEQNUM": "1695238",
 "_GID": "1000",
 "_RUNTIME_SCOPE": "system",
 "SYSLOG_IDENTIFIER": "/usr/libexec/gdm-x-session",
 "MESSAGE": "X.Org X Server 1.21.1.15",
 "_STREAM_ID": "7f35e3ce14d44dc8b589be76d4d355d9",
 "_TRANSPORT": "stdout",
 "_CAP_EFFECTIVE": "0",
 "_SYSTEMD_UNIT": "session-2.scope",
 "_UID": "1000",
 "_EXE": "/usr/libexec/Xorg",
 "PRIORITY": "4",
 "_COMM": "Xorg",
 "_SYSTEMD_CGROUP": "/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-2.scope",
 "_SYSTEMD_OWNER_UID": "1000",
 "_PID": "3929"
}

Note that the value for _COMM is Xorg. We can use that to search our logs with ease using the cat output from journalctl, which makes the output as terse as possible. It removes all the headers and make it look like you’re reading a plain old text log file:

> journalctl --output cat --boot _COMM=Xorg | head
(--) Log file renamed from "/home/major/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.pid-3929.log" to "/home/major/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log"
X.Org X Server 1.21.1.15
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Current Operating System: Linux zorro 6.12.13-200.fc41.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat Feb 8 20:05:26 UTC 2025 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=(hd0,gpt2)/vmlinuz-6.12.13-200.fc41.x86_64 root=UUID=bae22798-ce48-43e9-ac24-7bf7f7158e90 ro rootflags=subvol=root rd.luks.uuid=luks-defea11e-374c-48ab-83df-4f06c4c02186 rhgb quiet
Build ID: xorg-x11-server 21.1.15-1.fc41
Current version of pixman: 0.44.2
	Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
	to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,

In my particular case, I was missing the amdgpu driver for Xorg. I installed the xorg-x11-drv-amdgpu package, rebooted, and now my logs showed the driver being loaded on startup:

> journalctl --output cat --boot _COMM=Xorg | grep -i amdgpu | head
(II) Applying OutputClass "AMDgpu" to /dev/dri/card1
	loading driver: amdgpu
(==) Matched amdgpu as autoconfigured driver 0
(II) LoadModule: "amdgpu"
(II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/amdgpu_drv.so
(II) Module amdgpu: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
(II) AMDGPU: Driver for AMD Radeon:
	All GPUs supported by the amdgpu kernel driver
(II) AMDGPU(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section
(==) AMDGPU(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32

Connect 1Password's CLI and app in i3 with lxpolkit

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Bitwarden became my go-to password manager a few years ago after I finally abandoned LastPass. Once I read the recent news about stolen password vaults, I was even happier that I made the switch.

My original password manager from way back in my Apple days was 1Password. It had a great user interface on the Mac and on iPhones, but I found it frustrating to use when I switched to Linux laptops and Android phones.

Lots of people in my Mastodon timeline were singing the praises of 1Password’s security and user interface after the recent LastPass news, so I decided to give it another look. It has a great CLI now and the GUI application runs well in Linux. The CLI also connects to the application via PolicyKit and it has some helpful plugins for various other CLI tools, like the AWS cli.

I decided to give 1Password another try, but then I ran into a problem with the CLI. 🤔

🏃 In a hurry? Go straight to the fix.

Authentication problems

The 1Password application was up and running and I followed the documented steps for enabling Linux authentication for the CLI. However, I still couldn’t authenticate:

$ op item list --vault Private
[ERROR] 2022/12/31 11:26:54 authorization prompt dismissed, please try again

The 1Password documentation says that the application will automatically write a polkit action file at /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/com.1password.1Password.policy to handle the authentication and that file was present:

$ ls -al /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/com.1password.1Password.policy
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1508 Dec 29 09:48 /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/com.1password.1Password.policy

In addition, the PolicyKit daemon is running:

$ ps aufx | grep polkit
polkitd 1293 0.0 0.0 2692700 26736 ? Ssl 10:47 0:00 /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkitd --no-debug
$ rpm -qf /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkitd
polkit-121-4.fc37.x86_64

Putting it together

Then I stopped to think about what the system was telling me:

1Password’s CLI says that the authentication prompt is being dismissed
I never saw an authentication prompt
The PolicyKit daemon is running properly without errors
Running strace on polkitd and op showed everything looking good

But wait, the policykit daemon is only half of what I needed. There needs to be some type of window manager integration to pop up an authentication prompt and I wasn’t seeing that prompt.

On i3, I use lxpolkit for policykit integration and it should have popped up some kind of prompt for me. lxpolkit is installed:

$ rpm -q lxpolkit
lxpolkit-0.5.5-8.D20210419git82580e45.fc37.x86_64

Then I noticed something strange. The actual lxpolkit daemon that handles the authentication prompts was not running even though it was configured to automatically start as soon as I logged in:

$ rpm -ql lxpolkit | grep autostart
/etc/xdg/autostart/lxpolkit.desktop
$ pgrep lxpolkit
# Nothing here

My default i3 configuration starts all of these automatically with dex-autostart:

$ grep dex ~/.config/i3/config
exec --no-startup-id dex-autostart --autostart --environment i3

Then I saw the issue at the very end of the lxpolkit desktop file:

$ tail /etc/xdg/autostart/lxpolkit.desktop
Comment[tr]=Policykit Kimlik Doğrulama Aracı
Comment[uk]=Агент авторизації Policykit
Comment[zh_CN]=Policykit 认证代理
Comment[zh_TW]=Policykit 身分核對代理程式
Exec=lxpolkit
TryExec=lxpolkit
Icon=gtk-dialog-authentication
Hidden=true
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.26
OnlyShowIn=LXDE;

The OnlyShowIn=LXDE means that dex-autostart will skip it when the environment is set to i3!🤦‍♂️

The fix

I copied the desktop file into my local autostart directory and removed the last line:

$ cp /etc/xdg/autostart/lxpolkit.desktop ~/.config/autostart/
$ tail -n 5 ~/.config/autostart/lxpolkit.desktop
Exec=lxpolkit
TryExec=lxpolkit
Icon=gtk-dialog-authentication
Hidden=true
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.26

Then I ran dex-autostart manually to ensure it worked:

# dex-autostart --autostart --environment i3 --verbose
Autostart file: /home/major/.config/autostart/lxpolkit.desktop
Executing command: lxpolkit

Success!

$ ps aufx |grep lxpolkit
major 20432 0.0 0.0 393124 12304 pts/3 Sl 11:54 0:00 lxpolkit

I tried the 1Password command line application one more time…

It worked! As long as the 1Password application is running and unlocked, I can use the op CLI tool with my normal Linux system authentication.

Make your mark with the compose key

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Much of my work is driven by my keyboard, and I love finding new ways to do complicated actions in a hurry. That’s why I’m drawn towards tiling window managers like i3 and sway.

My team at work spans the globe and speaks many different languages. Many of these languages have diacritics (such as accents, tildes, or other marks) that completely change the pronunciation (or even the meaning!) of the word. Sure, I can type Tomas (TOM-oss) quickly, but it’s not the same as Tomaš (TOM-osh).

Using diacritics shows respect for someone’s name, their language and their culture. In some situations, it can be the difference between something totally normal and potentially offensive¹.

The old way

I wrote about this way back in 2020 but my main method for getting this done was using the AltGr key.

If you want to type niños (children) in Spanish, you do this:

Hold down the right Alt key
Hold down the Shift key
Press the ~ key
Press n
Let go of everything and admire your ñ 😍

This felt so slick and I was off to the races typing all kinds of accents and other marks. I wrote the blog post, tweeted about it, and waited for others to reply with the same excitement.

The first reply from a European was:

Nice work, but what’s wrong with the compose key?

What’s a compose key? 🤔

Compose key

I stared at my keyboard. Where is this mysterious key? I’ve never seen it before!

Wikipedia held the answer:

Because Microsoft Windows and macOS do not support a compose key by default, the key does not exist on most keyboards designed for modern PC hardware. When software supports compose key behaviour, some other key is used. Common examples are the right-hand Windows key, the AltGr key, or one of the Ctrl keys. There is no LED or other indicator that a compose sequence is ongoing.

I get to choose the key that becomes the compose key! After asking a few Europeans about what they use on a US keyboard layout, they suggested the right CTRL key.

My previous blog post had an i3 configuration line like this:

exec_always --no-startup-id "setxkbmap us -variant altgr-intl"

I figured there would need to be some kind of argument to pass to set the compose key. The man page for setxkbmap says that all of the keyboard sources are in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules:

> $ grep compose /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.xml
 <name>mod_led:compose</name>
 <name>compose:ralt</name>
 <name>compose:lwin</name>
 <name>compose:lwin-altgr</name>
 <name>compose:rwin</name>
 <name>compose:rwin-altgr</name>
 <name>compose:menu</name>
 <name>compose:menu-altgr</name>
 <name>compose:lctrl</name>
 <name>compose:lctrl-altgr</name>
 <name>compose:rctrl</name>
 <name>compose:rctrl-altgr</name>
 <name>compose:caps</name>
 <name>compose:caps-altgr</name>
 <name>compose:102</name>
 <name>compose:102-altgr</name>
 <name>compose:paus</name>
 <name>compose:prsc</name>
 <name>compose:sclk</name>

Opening that file shows the specific rctrl option:

<configItem>
 <name>Compose key</name>
 <description>Position of Compose key</description>
</configItem>
<!--- SNIP --->
<option>
 <configItem>
 <name>compose:rctrl</name>
 <description>Right Ctrl</description>
 </configItem>
</option>

My new i3 line looks like this:

exec_always --no-startup-id "setxkbmap us -variant altgr-intl -option compose:rctrl"

Now I get the best of both worlds:

I can still use the Alt+Gr key for muscle memory.
The compose key gives me access to more characters with less keypresses!

There’s a long list of symbols you can type with your compose key!

Just check out años versus anos in Español. 😉 🥔 ↩︎

Configure multimedia keys on a Ducky One keyboard

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My Ducky One 2 keyboard arrived around two years ago and I love it. I type more accurately and that clackety sound gives me that old computer feeling. (I went with Cherry MX Blue switches.)

Although it proviees some basic controls for media, such as muting and adjusting volume, there are no buttons for pausing music or switching to different tracks. That function exists, but it takes some configuration to work.

Handling media keys

For those of you running a large desktop environment like GNOME or KDE, you likely have built-in multimedia key handling in the environment. However, I use sway and i3 and there’s no native handling there.

There’s a great utility called playerctl that makes this really easy. If you’re on Fedora, run dnf install playerctl to get started.

Next, you’ll need some hotkeys in i3/sway:

bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl play-pause
bindsym XF86AudioNext exec playerctl next
bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec playerctl previous

Press Mod+Shift+c to reload your Sway/i3 configuration.

These are the standard multimedia keys that many keyboards have, but my Ducky keyboard doesn’t have them. The keyboard does have the ability to send these keystrokes through, but we need to set up a macro for them! Skip to the next section for that.

But before we go, playerctl handles all kinds of different multimedia players on your system:

$ playerctl -l
firefox.instance4056
spotify

I tend to use my media keys for Spotify most often, so I updated my Sway/i3 configuration to this:

bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl -p spotify play-pause
bindsym XF86AudioNext exec playerctl -p spotify next
bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec playerctl -p spotify previous

This ensures that my media keys won’t interfere with something in Firefox and will always control my Spotify media. 😉

🚨 Before going any further, check that playerctl works! 🚨

Run playerctl -p spotify play-pause one time and your music should play if it wasn’t playing before, or it should pause if it was already playing. Run it one more time to ensure it does the opposite the second time. Use a different player or remove the -p argument entirely to test it with other players.

RTEM (Read the excellent manual)

The Ducky One 2 has a helpful manual in English and Chinese. We need a macro to get the multimedia keys working and that process isn’t easy to follow as it spans multiple pages.

📚 If you need a manual for a different Ducky keyboard, their support page has a wizard that helps you find the exact manual for your keyboard.

The good stuff starts at page 41 in my manual:

First, determine which profile you want to use. In my case, I chose profile 2.

Next, we need to know which multimedia function keys are hidden away in the keyboard’s firmware:

For each key combination, we need to know which keys we want to press to trigger the multimedia key (letters above). I’m most interested in play/pause, previous track, and next track, so I’m building out my configuration like this:

Play/Pause: Fn+End (key D)
Previous track: Fn+PgUp (key G)
Next track: Fn+PgDown (key F)

Making macros

Now we’re ready to record a macro.

Switch to profile 2 with Fn+2. The LED underneath the 2 should blink briefly.

Enter macro mode by holding down Fn and Ctrl for three seconds (press Fn first, though). The keyboard indicators at the top right of the keyboard should be blinking slowly.

Carefully set the macro:

Hold down Fn and Ctrl for three seconds. Indicator lights should blink slowly.
Hold Fn and press End.
Hold Fn, then hold the Windows key, then press D (for play/pause). Release all keys after pressing D.
Exit macro recording mode by holding Fn and pressing Ctrl. Release all keys.

Repeat for previous track:

Hold down Fn and Ctrl for three seconds. Indicator lights should blink slowly.
Hold Fn and press PgUp.
Hold Fn, then hold the Windows key, then press G (for previous track). Release all keys after pressing D.
Exit macro recording mode by holding Fn and pressing Ctrl. Release all keys.

Finally for next track:

Hold down Fn and Ctrl for three seconds. Indicator lights should blink slowly.
Hold Fn and press PgDn.
Hold Fn, then hold the Windows key, then press F (for next track). Release all keys after pressing D.
Exit macro recording mode by holding Fn and pressing Ctrl. Release all keys.

Testing

You did test playerctl by itself earlier, right? 😜 If you didn’t, go back to the first section and save yourself some frustration.

Press Fn+End and your music should toggle between playing and paused. Press Fn+End once more and it should toggle again.

If playerctl works on the command line, but doesn’t work via the keyboard macro, you can go back through the macro setting steps above. You can also clear a macro from a key by holding Fn+Ctrl for three seconds, tapping the misconfigured key, tapping the same key again, and pressing Fn+Ctrl.

Enjoy your quick access to multimedia keys! ⌨ 🎶

Clocks in multiple time zones with i3status

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Many of my coworkers are on Central European Time (CET) and they’re seven hours ahead of me (most of the time). Then there are those weird times of year where they move their clocks for Daylight Savings Time before we do in the USA.

I have a handy clock in my i3status bar, but I’d like to track my coworkers’ timezones in addition to my own.

Configuration

By default, i3status looks for its configuration file in ~/.config/i3status/config. Open up the configuration file in your favorite editor and add two pieces.

I’m most interested in CET, so I’ll use Berlin for my extra clock. First, add two tztime lines near the top:

order += "tztime berlin"
order += "tztime local"

Then add the corresponding sections at the end of the configuration file:

tztime local {
 format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S 🇺🇸"
}

tztime berlin {
 format = "%H:%M 🇩🇪"
 timezone = "Europe/Berlin"
 hide_if_equals_localtime = true
}

The hide_if_equals_localtime configuration ensures that I only see one clock if my local timezone switches to CET. Emoji flags add a little bit of flair to the clocks in the status bar. 😉

Here’s how it looks (with the Hack font):

Apply the change

Reload the i3 configuration with Mod+Shift+c and restart i3 with Mod+Shift+r.

Make screenshots quickly in i3 with maim and xclip

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My daily workflow includes taking tons of screenshots. I’m constantly relaying views of different data or results of various work between different chat systems and emails. As with all things that I do often, I look for ways to optimize them as much as possible.

(I’m that guy who wrote a post on an efficient emoji workflow in Wayland.) 😂

Goals

Screenshots must be easy to take and share, period. Modern versions of Firefox make this extremely easy with the built-in screenshot mechanism.

Right click an element on a web page, choose Take Screenshot from the pop-up and screenshot a whole page or just a single DOM element. From there, you can copy it directly to the clipboard and paste it elsewhere or save it to a file.

I want something as close to that for the i3 desktop environment.

The maim game

Fortunately, there’s a piece of software called maim!¹ The README in the repository contains lots of helpful examples for basic screenshots all the way up to fancy conversions with drop shadows. ✨

My use case is quite simple. I want to press a key, get a selection crosshair, make my selection, and get my screenshot copied to the clipboard.

Here’s how I do it in i3:

bindsym Print exec maim -s -u | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png -i

Let’s break this down:

First, we use bindsym to bind the Print Screen (Print) key
Hitting Print Screen runs maim and pops a selection crosshair (-s) and hides the cursor (u)
Once the selection is made, the image pipes straight into xclip
xclip stores the image in the clipboard with the image/png mime type

I’m able to go to my favorite application or browser window with Slack, Discord, or Mastodon open and simply paste the image into my message. 🏁

Before you get upset with the name, keep in mind that it’s the shortened version of make image. 😉 ↩︎

Manage sound volume with volumeicon in i3

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Sun, 27 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Now that Fedora 37 launched, I decided to wipe my main laptop and do a clean installation. I made some poor configuration choices while in a hurry over the past year and the mess finally caught up with me.

The latest version of the i3 spin caught my eye and I used it for the installation. Once my laptop booted up, I noticed a volume icon in my system tray that appeared automatically. I’ve normally used pasystray for this task, but volumeicon came with the i3 spin.

The volumeicon tray icon has a few handy features:

Notifications via libnotify (or GTK) when something sound-related changes
Quick access to muting and unmuting a sound device via clicking the icon
Access to sound mixers and preferences via a right click

However, it also catches key presses from my volume keys on my laptop. Catching the volume keys is disabled by default but you can change that via its configuration file.

Normally, I would have an i3 configuration snippet like this one:

# Use pactl to adjust volume in PulseAudio.
set $refresh_i3status killall -SIGUSR1 i3status
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +10% && $refresh_i3status
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -10% && $refresh_i3status
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle && $refresh_i3status
bindsym XF86AudioMicMute exec --no-startup-id pactl set-source-mute @DEFAULT_SOURCE@ toggle && $refresh_i3status

That works fine, but volumeicon can handle this for us. Here’s my current volumeicon configuration in ~/.config/volumeicon/volumeicon:

[Alsa]
card=default

[Notification]
show_notification=true
notification_type=0

[StatusIcon]
stepsize=5
onclick=pavucontrol
theme=Default
use_panel_specific_icons=false
lmb_slider=false
mmb_mute=false
use_horizontal_slider=false
show_sound_level=true
use_transparent_background=false

[Hotkeys]
up_enabled=true
down_enabled=true
mute_enabled=true
up=XF86AudioRaiseVolume
down=XF86AudioLowerVolume
mute=XF86AudioMute

I’ve changed a few things from the defaults:

Enabled notifications via GTK (libnotify notifications didn’t look great)
Enabled the volume keys in the [Hotkeys] section

i3 takes care of starting the icon for me with exec:

exec --no-startup-id volumeicon

Log out and log in again to test the changes.

Disable HiDPI in alacritty

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The alacritty terminal remains my favorite terminal because of its simple configuration, regular expression hints, and incredible performance. It’s written in Rust and it uses OpenGL to accelerate the terminal output.

I also like high DPI displays. My desktop has two 4K monitors (3840x2160) and my X1 Nano (2160x1350) crams plenty of pixels into a small display. With Linux, you get two options:

Use HiDPI with larger fonts for a clear, crisp display. It really does look pretty.
Disable HiDPI and get a lot more screen real estate with smaller fonts. Prepare to squint. 🥸

I prefer more screen real estate (and I wear glasses), so I usually disable HiDPI on most of my machines. After wiping my laptop and starting over recently, I realized my alacritty terminals had massive fonts again. If only I had written down how I fixed it. 🤔

Lucky for you, I’m writing about those options here:

Disable HiDPI just for alacritty

You might be saying “just lower the font size in the alacritty configuration” and call it a day. Well, that method leaves you with smaller fonts, sure, but then there are gaps in spacing between character and lines. It just looks clunky.

There’s an environment variable we can use: WINIT_X11_SCALE_FACTOR. To disable HiDPI and use pixels at a 1:1 ratio, set the following option in your alacritty configuration file (usually ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml):

env:
 WINIT_X11_SCALE_FACTOR: "1"

Close all of your alacritty terminals and open a new one. You should now see smaller fonts and a terminal with HiDPI disabled.

Disable HiDPI across the board

In many of the full-featured window manager, such as GNOME or KDE, you can disable HiDPI within the system settings. The i3 window manager requires some manual work (as you might expect).

From the old days of X comes .Xresources! These X resources set all kinds of configuration options for all applications running under X. Here’s my current ~/.Xresources file:

Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.autohint: 0
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
Xft.hintstyle: hintmedium
Xft.hinting: 1
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.rgba: rgb

The first line sets the DPI to 96 (which is my preference). Increasing that number will take you closer to a HiDPI setting and potentially make text crisper, but larger. Lowering it will make text smaller and sometimes a bit ugly if you go below 85.

To use X resources, you first need xrdb. On Fedora, install it, load your current configuration, and query it:

$ dnf install /usr/bin/xrdb
$ xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources
$ xrdb -query -all
Xft.antialias:	1
Xft.autohint:	0
Xft.dpi:	96
Xft.hinting:	1
Xft.hintstyle:	hintmedium
Xft.lcdfilter:	lcddefault
Xft.rgba:	rgb

You need to quit most applications and start them again before you can see the DPI changes. In some situations, I needed to reboot to get the changes in place for all applications.

Backlight control with i3

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Controlling the LED backlight brightness on a laptop in Linux used to be a chore, but most window managers automatically configure the brightness buttons on your laptop. However, everything is much more customizable in i3 and it requires a little more configuration.

Controlling the light

First off, we need something that allows us to control the brightness. There’s a perfectly named project called light that does exactly this task! In Fedora, install it via:

$ sudo dnf -y install light

You can query the current brightness:

$ light -G
5.00

On my laptop, 5% is very dim. Now we can increase the brightness using a simple command:

$ light -A 5
$ light -G
9.99

And we can bring it right back down:

$ light -U 5
$ light -G
5.00

Setting up hotkeys

Open your i3 configuration (usually ~/.config/i3/config) and add the hotkey configuration:

# Handle backlight.
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec light -A 5
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec light -U 5

Refresh the i3 configuration with $mod + shift + r.

Each time you press the brightness up button on your laptop, the brightness level goes up by 5%. The brightness down button lowers it by 5%. This is a good setup for me since I normally only need to adjust it by a few stops depending on ambient light.

However, if your lighting changes drastically from time to time, you can set up a different keybinding for a much more aggressive change:

# Handle backlight.
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec light -A 5
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec light -U 5
bindsym shift+XF86MonBrightnessUp exec light -A 25
bindsym shift+XF86MonBrightnessDown exec light -U 25

Hold shift and press brightness up or down. Now you are moving up and down by 25% brightness each time. Enjoy! 💡

Photo credit: Ariel on Unsplash

Enable dark mode in Firefox without changing themes

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Most modern web browsers, such as Firefox, take cues from the desktop environment or from themes applied to the browser to determine whether a user wants light or dark mode from websites. This is often done through the prefers-color-scheme CSS media feature:

.day { background: #eee; color: black; }
.night { background: #333; color: white; }

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
 .day.dark-scheme { background: #333; color: white; }
 .night.dark-scheme { background: black; color: #ddd; }
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: light) {
 .day.light-scheme { background: white; color: #555; }
 .night.light-scheme { background: #eee; color: black; }
}

There are those situations where you want web pages to prefer a dark mode, but you don’t want to change your desktop settings or apply a darker theme to Firefox. You can follow these steps to prefer dark color schemes in Firefox:

Type about:config in the address bar and press enter.
Click Accept the Risk and Continue. (if you want to accept the risk) 😉
In the search box, type ui.systemUsesDarkTheme
Click the Number radio button below the search box.
Press the plus (+) on the far right side.
Set the value to 1 and press enter.

Now, close the about:config page and load up a website that has dark color schemes available.

If you want to test the change quickly, just reload this page! My blog has light and dark color schemes set depending on what your browser prefers. 🎉 😎

Photo credit: Andre Benz on Unsplash

Enable touchpad tap to click in i3

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One of the first things I look for on a fresh installation of a laptop is how to enable tap-to-click automatically. Most window managers and desktop environments make this easy with a control panel that has toggles or drop-down menus.

However, this requires a little more effort in i3. Fortunately, there are two routes to get it enabled: in xorg’s configuration or via your i3 configuration.

Via the i3 configuration

The advantage of this method is that it’s easy to configure and test out quickly. On the other hand, this configuration change will only affect i3 on your system. (Other window managers won’t be affected.)

Start with the xinput command to determine which devices are on your system. If you’re on Fedora, just run dnf install xinput to install it.

Here’s the output on my Lenovo ThinkPad T490:

➜ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer 	id=2	[master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer 	id=4	[slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad 	id=12	[slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ TPPS/2 Elan TrackPoint 	id=13	[slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard 	id=3	[master keyboard (2)]
 ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard 	id=5	[slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Power Button 	id=6	[slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Video Bus 	id=7	[slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Sleep Button 	id=8	[slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Integrated Camera: Integrated C 	id=9	[slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ Integrated Camera: Integrated I 	id=10	[slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard 	id=11	[slave keyboard (3)]
 ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons 	id=14	[slave keyboard (3)]

My touchpad is the second entry in the first group: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad. Now we can list all the properties of this device using the id number (12 in my case) or the full name:

➜ xinput list-props "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
Device 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad':
	Device Enabled (187):	1
	Coordinate Transformation Matrix (189):	1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
	libinput Tapping Enabled (322):	0
	libinput Tapping Enabled Default (323):	0
	libinput Tapping Drag Enabled (324):	1
	libinput Tapping Drag Enabled Default (325):	1
	libinput Tapping Drag Lock Enabled (326):	0
	libinput Tapping Drag Lock Enabled Default (327):	0
	libinput Tapping Button Mapping Enabled (328):	1, 0
	libinput Tapping Button Mapping Default (329):	1, 0
	libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled (330):	0
	libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled Default (331):	0
	libinput Disable While Typing Enabled (332):	1
	libinput Disable While Typing Enabled Default (333):	1
	libinput Scroll Methods Available (334):	1, 1, 0
	libinput Scroll Method Enabled (335):	1, 0, 0
	libinput Scroll Method Enabled Default (336):	1, 0, 0
	libinput Click Methods Available (337):	1, 1
	libinput Click Method Enabled (338):	1, 0
	libinput Click Method Enabled Default (339):	1, 0
	libinput Middle Emulation Enabled (340):	0
	libinput Middle Emulation Enabled Default (341):	0
	libinput Accel Speed (342):	0.000000
	libinput Accel Speed Default (343):	0.000000
	libinput Accel Profiles Available (344):	1, 1
	libinput Accel Profile Enabled (345):	1, 0
	libinput Accel Profile Enabled Default (346):	1, 0
	libinput Left Handed Enabled (347):	0
	libinput Left Handed Enabled Default (348):	0
	libinput Send Events Modes Available (307):	1, 1
	libinput Send Events Mode Enabled (308):	0, 0
	libinput Send Events Mode Enabled Default (309):	0, 0
	Device Node (310):	"/dev/input/event4"
	Device Product ID (311):	2, 7
	libinput Drag Lock Buttons (349):	<no items>
	libinput Horizontal Scroll Enabled (350):	1

The important line in the output is this one:

libinput Tapping Enabled (322):	0

Let’s turn on tap-to-click for the touchpad:

xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "libinput Tapping Enabled" 1

Your tap-to-click should now work! If it doesn’t, go back to the list of input devices and double check that there isn’t another touchpad. Some laptops show multiple touchpads even though there’s only one in the system. This is due to extra buttons being labeled as a touchpad on some laptops.

Let’s make it permanent in the i3 configuration. Open up ~/.config/i3/config and add a line:

exec xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "libinput Tapping Enabled" 1

You’re all set!

Via the xorg configuration method

This method affects all window managers on your machine, so keep that in mind. Make a new file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/touchpad-tap.conf and add the following:

Section "InputClass"
 Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
 MatchIsTouchpad "on"
 MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
 Driver "libinput"
 Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection

We’re telling xorg to apply this configuration to any libinput touchpad on the system (but you could use the specific name of the device here if you want), and we’re enabling the tapping option.

You can make this change effective immediately with:

xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "libinput Tapping Enabled" 1

The xorg configuration change takes effect when you log out of your X session or you reboot your computer.

Photo credit: pine watt on Unsplash

Customize GNOME from i3

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

i3 has been my window manager of choice for a while and I really enjoy its simplicity and ease of use. I use plenty of gtk applications, such as Firefox and Evolution, and configuring them within i3 can be confusing.

This post covers a few methods to change configurations for GNOME and gtk applications from i3.

lxappearance

Almost all of the gtk theming settings are available in lxappearance. You can change fonts, mouse cursors, icons, and colors. The application makes the changes easy to preview and you can install more icon sets if you wish.

Fedora already has lxappearance packaged and ready to go:

$ sudo dnf install lxappearance
$ lxappearance

Although style changes are immediately applied in lxappearance, you need to restart all gtk applications to see the style changes there.

lxappearance writes GTK 2.0 and GTK 3.0 configuration files:

GTK 2.0: ~/.gtkrc-2.0
GTK 3.0: ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

gnome-control-center

Recent versions of GNOME bundle all of the system settings into a single application called gnome-control-center. This normally starts right up in GNOME, but i3 is a little trickier since it doesn’t have some of the same environment variables set:

$ gnome-control-center
**
ERROR:../shell/cc-shell-model.c:458:cc_shell_model_set_panel_visibility: assertion failed: (valid)
[1] 837 abort (core dumped) gnome-control-center

The problem is a missing environment variable: XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP. We can set that on the command line and everything works:

env XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME gnome-control-center

gnome-tweaks

The gnome-tweaks application has been around for a long time and it works well from i3. Install it in Fedora and run it:

$ sudo dnf install gnome-tweaks
$ gnome-tweaks

Although many of the configurations inside gnome-tweaks match up with lxappearance, gnome-tweaks offers an added benefit: it changes the configuration inside GNOME’s key-based configuration system (dconf). This is required for some applications, such as Firefox.

You can also open up dconf-editor and make these changes manually in /org/gnome/desktop/interface, but gnome-tweaks has a much more user-friendly interface.

Automatic floating windows in i3

major@mhtx.net (Major Hayden) — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The i3 window manager is a fast window manager that helps you keep all of your applications in the right place. It automatically tiles windows and can manage those tiles across multiple virtual desktops.

However, there are certain applications that I really prefer in a floating window. Floating windows do not get tiled and they can easily be dragged around with your mouse. They’re the type of windows you expect to see on other non-tiling desktops such as GNOME or KDE.

Convert a window to floating temporarily

If you have an existing window that you prefer to float, select that window and press Mod + Shift + Space bar. The window will pop up in front of the tiled windows and you can easily move it with your mouse.

Depending on your configuration, you may be able to resize it by grabbing a corner of the window with your mouse. You can also assign a key combination for resizing in your i3 configuration file (usually ~/.config/i3/config):

# resize window (you can also use the mouse for that)
mode "resize" {
 bindsym Left resize shrink width 10 px or 10 ppt
 bindsym Down resize grow height 10 px or 10 ppt
 bindsym Up resize shrink height 10 px or 10 ppt
 bindsym Right resize grow width 10 px or 10 ppt
 bindsym Return mode "default"
 bindsym Escape mode "default"
 bindsym $mod+r mode "default"
}
bindsym $mod+r mode "resize"

With this configuration, simply press Mod + r and use the arrow keys to grow or shrink the window’s borders.

Always float certain windows

For those windows that you always want to be floating no matter what, i3 has a solution for that, too. Just tell i3 how to identify your windows and ensure floating enable appears in the i3 config:

for_window [window_role="About"] floating enable
for_window [class="vlc"] floating enable
for_window [title="Authy"] floating enable

In the example above, I have a few windows always set to be floating:

[window_role="About"] - Any of the “About” windows in various applications that are normally opened by Help -> About.
[class="vlc"] - The VLC media player can be a good one to float if you need to stuff it away in a corner.
[title="Authy"] - Authy’s chrome extension looks downright silly as a tiled window.

Any time these windows are spawned, they will automatically appear as floating windows. You can always switch them back to tiled manually by pressing Mod + Shift + Space bar.

Identifying windows

Identifying windows in the way that i3 cares about can be challenging. Knowing when to use window_role or class for a window isn’t very intuitive. Fortunately, there’s a great script from an archived i3 faq thread that makes this easy:

Download this script to your system, make it executable (chmod +x i3-get-window-criteria), and run it. As soon as you do that, a plus (+) icon will replace your normal mouse cursor. Click on the window you care about and look for the output in your terminal where you ran the i3-get-window-criteria script.

On my system, clicking on a terminator terminal window gives me:

[class="Terminator" id=37748743 instance="terminator" title="major@indium:~"]

If I wanted to float all terminator windows, I could add this to my i3 configuration file:

for_window [class="Terminator"] floating enable

Float in a specific workspace

Do you need a window to always float on a specific workspace? i3 can do that, too!

Let’s go back to the example with VLC. Let’s consider that we have a really nice 4K display where we always want to watch movies and that’s where workspace 2 lives. We can tell i3 to always float the VLC window on workspace 2 with this configuration:

set $ws1 "1: main"
set $ws2 "2: 4kdisplay"
for_window [class="vlc"] floating enable
for_window [class="vlc"] move to workspace $ws2

Restart i3 to pick up the new changes (usually Mod + Shift + R) and start VLC. It should appear on workspace 2 as a floating window!