Tag: x11

xdg and autostart in Linux X server regardless the desktop environment

There is a tool xdg, which manages application integration with the different GUI Desktops in the Linux world. One of the features it offers is to autostart an application when the X window system starts and it is perfectly normal to have a bunch of running programs that cannot be found in the Windowing manager settings like KDE System Settings -> Autostart, GNOME Tweak tool and Autostart and so on.

xdg offers autostart of Linux appilcations mainly Desktop when the GUI windowing system starts

There two main paths to look for entries to autostart:

  1. /etc/xdg/autostart – called system-wide and most of the application will place files when they are installed.
  2. [user’s home]/.config/autostart – user’s applications to start when the user logs in .

With xdg autostart feature the user can explain himself why the Windowing systems like KDE or GNOME start tens of applications (not exactly related to the base GUI windowing system).

There is a security problem here, which is sometimes installing a package will place an autostart file there because the maintainer decided it is important but the package might be just a dependency and the next time the user logs in unwanted program might execute and open ports!

For example, Rygel is an open-source UPnP/DLNA MediaServer and it might be installed as a dependency but it places an autostart file, which starts a UPnP/DLNA server and exports the /home/[user’s directory]/Videos, /home/[user’s directory]/Pictures and more to the local network. Another example is with the GNOME index system tracker and the tracker-store, which may easily eat the RAM, disk, CPU, battery on a system without GNOME but with a different GUI!

Here is what a typical Ubuntu 18.04 system might autostart

Keep on reading!

meson.build – ERROR: Dependency “x11” not found, tried pkgconfig and cmake

Another day and another major update exposed an error of missing the “x11” library. Apparently, the pkg-config got corrupted for X11 library. Most of the time the error is self-explanatory, but sometimes it is too generic like: 

Run-time dependency x11 found: NO (tried pkgconfig and cmake)

meson.build:412:2: ERROR: Dependency "x11" not found, tried pkgconfig and cmake

The name “x11” is a part of multiple libraries:

srv ~ # pkg-config --list-all |grep x11

gdkglext-1.0                               GdkGLExt - OpenGL Extension to GDK (x11 target)
gdk-2.0                                    GDK - GTK+ Drawing Kit (x11 target)
gtk+-2.0                                   GTK+ - GTK+ Graphical UI Library (x11 target)
gdkglext-x11-1.0                           GdkGLExt - OpenGL Extension to GDK (x11 target)
x11-xcb                                    X11 XCB - X Library XCB interface
gdk-x11-3.0                                GDK - GTK+ Drawing Kit
gdk-x11-2.0                                GDK - GTK+ Drawing Kit (x11 target)
gtkglext-1.0                               GtkGLExt - OpenGL Extension to GTK+ (x11 target)
x11                                        X11 - X Library
xkbcommon-x11                              xkbcommon-x11 - XKB API common to servers and clients - X11 support
scim-x11utils                              scim-x11utils - X11 Utilities for Smart Common Input Method platform
clutter-x11-1.0                            Clutter - Clutter Core Library
gtk+-x11-3.0                               GTK+ - GTK+ Graphical UI Library
libva-x11                                  libva-x11 - Userspace Video Acceleration (VA) x11 interface
gtkglext-x11-1.0                           GtkGLExt - OpenGL Extension to GTK+ (x11 target)
gtk+-x11-2.0                               GTK+ - GTK+ Graphical UI Library (x11 target)

The above example is of working x11 library pkg-config. In our broken system the 10th line was missing.
Keep on reading!