This note covers how to get get sway running on Void Linux w/ seat management and dbus without using elogind.

Install information:

• AMD GPU
• Sway
• dbus
• seatd

Install seatd

sudo xbps-install seatd
sudo ln -s /etc/sv/seatd /var/service
sudo sv enable seatd

Add user to appropriate groups

sudo usermod -aG _seatd,audio,video rj1

PAM module: pam_rundir

On other operating systems leveraging systemd, the runtime directory is usually created/managed by systemd-logind. Since Void Linux does not use systemd, we’ll need to find another solution. I’d prefer not to use elogind, so the best solution I’ve come across is pam_rundir. We’re already using PAM so why not let it manage our runtime directory as well? Makes sense to me!

Install pam_rundir module

sudo xbps-install pam_rundir

Edit the file /etc/pam.d/system-login, adding:

-session optional pam_rundir.so

Now you don’t need to worry about XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not being set!

I’ve recently come across dumb_runtime_dir as well. I think the only difference is that it doesn’t delete the directory on logout, while pam_rundir does.

dbus

Enable the dbus service

sudo ln -s /etc/sv/dbus /var/service
sudo sv enable dbus

Install software

sudo xbps-install mesa-dri sway

Launch script

At this point, you should logout and log back in to continue

You should now be able to simply launch Sway by running:

dbus-run-session sway

But I like to set a fixed dbus session address. I created a launch script called startw which consists of:

#!/bin/zsh
dbus-daemon --session --nofork --nopidfile --address=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS &
sway
# sway -V > /tmp/sway.log 2>&1

DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS is set in my shell login profile already, but you could set it in this launch script if you wanted to.

Have fun!