E-mail: February 2008 Archives

Yesterday I went on about the man page for fvwm, the default X window manager in OpenBSD.

It clearly says that, in the absence of a .fvwmrc file in the user's home directory, fvwm will look in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/ for a file called system.fvwmrc:

During initialization, fvwm will search for a configuration file which describes key and button bindings, and a few other things. The format of these files will be described later. First, fvwm will search for a file named .fvwmrc in the user's home directory, then in ${sysconfdir} (typically /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm). Failing that, it will look for system.fvwmrc in ${sysconfdir} for system-wide defaults. If that file is not found, fvwm will be basically useless.

There's a file called system.fvwm2rc in that directory, but it doesn't control fvwm. I know this because I added a line to it, stopped X and restarted it. No change.

Since fvwm looks for the .fvwmrc file in the user's home directory, I decided to create one with the help of the system.fvwm2rc file mentioned in the man page.

I used the Geany editor, but substitute any text editor you wish (I'm just more comfortable in a GUI editor when it comes to things like copying and pasting. I don't use vi enough to be all that proficient).

Here's how to do it:

Log on with your user account, open an xterm window and do the following (again, substitute your favorite editor for geany, or install the geany package on your OpenBSD system with $ sudo pkg_add -i geany):

$ geany /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/system.fvwm2rc

Under the File menu in Geany, choose Save As, then navigate to your home directory and save the file as .fvwmrc (in other words, create /home/~/.fvwmrc, substituting the name of your user's home file for ~)

Now you should have a .fvwmrc file in your home directory that is editable by the user account. Modifying the menus is pretty easy. I've already added a category for applications and added all the apps I've installed thus far to it.

I'd still love to find out where the systemwide fvwm configuration file really lives. I don't have enough Unix or OpenBSD knowledge to do so at this point.

I've stuck with fvwm because it's the default window manager in OpenBSD, and it's pretty nice once you learn about it. I've got a long way to go, that's for sure.

Fvwm note: Changes in your .fvwmrc aren't implemented until you quit X and restart it.

Applications I've added to my OpenBSD box thus far:

Geany (text editor)
Dillo (lightweight GUI browser)
Firefox (heavyweight GUI browser)
Nano (console text editor; I just "get it" more than vi)
MC (console file manager)
Rox (the ROX-filer GUI file manager)
Abiword (relatively lightweight word processor)
Ted (even lighter RTF-format word processor)

I haven't added a mail client, and I might add Sylpheed or Thunderbird. I might also add mutt, fetchmail and msmtp and try POP mail from the command line for one account. Generally, though, the whole console e-mail thing baffles me -- and yes, I have done it before. I generally find a GUI mail client or Web mail interface so much easier that I don't need to spend days and days fiddling with mutt.

Essential OpenBSD reading: The OpenBSD Journal. I just found out about this, although I'm sure I've been here before.

Also: OpenBSD 101.

Ted on OpenBSD: I installed the Ted word processor -- an exceedingly light application that reads and produces files in rich text format -- which can be read and edited by most word-processing applications, including Microsoft Word.

Ted on OpenBSD ... how to actually run it:

This doesn't work:

$ ted

But this does:

$ Ted

Remember, Unix-like OSes are case sensitive, and in the case of Ted, it's really capital T, small e, small d.

I've been grumbling about Ted not working in Debian for an age, but Ted works fine in OpenBSD. I'll probably use Geany for most of my work, though. I got used to Geany by using it in Puppy Linux, and while I'm not crazy about its Windows implementation, in Linux/Unix, I still really like it.