run fvwm once, send your system to hell
by jr_bob_dobbs from LinuxQuestions.org on (#56XVR)
Turns out that if one runs fvwm just once, one's system will go to hell. Not the fun party-with-famous-dead-people hell, but the hell where things do not work and reality is breached and the evil thwarting demon cannot be gotten rid of. Read on, if you dare, and learn from my mistake.
So I wanted to give fvwm a try. I edited my .xinitrc to run fvwm instead of blackbox. Typed startx. Was in fvwm. OK, that's, umm, nice. That's enough for today. Let's exit out of x-windows, change the .xinitrc and the go back to blackbox.
Can you hear that? The evil cackling? "Ha ha ho ho, look at him. He thinks he can escape! Ha ha! Watch this!"
fvwm occupied my screen. Um, say what? Made sure ... yup I did save changes to my .xinitrc. Somehow "exec blackbox" is being interpretted as "exec fvwm." Never mind that that's impossible. As one often discovers: it's only impossible until it happens. But why did it have to happen to me?
Time for desperate measures, OverKill is now in effect. Exited x-windows again and chodded /usr/bin/xfce* to be non-executable. Take that, fetcher!
Nope: now startx crashes back to the console.
Edited my .xinitrc once again, this time for dwm.
Bam: success. dwm says "no way, evil thwarting deamon. I'm not going to stop running, screw you." So now I am running gui programs again. Whew.
So, a statement and a question.
Statement: beware the evil that is fvwm! You can never escape it (well, unless you start using dwm?)!
Question: short of restoring from a month-old backup, how do I get blacbox to not get replaced by fvwm every time?
Thank you.


So I wanted to give fvwm a try. I edited my .xinitrc to run fvwm instead of blackbox. Typed startx. Was in fvwm. OK, that's, umm, nice. That's enough for today. Let's exit out of x-windows, change the .xinitrc and the go back to blackbox.
Can you hear that? The evil cackling? "Ha ha ho ho, look at him. He thinks he can escape! Ha ha! Watch this!"
fvwm occupied my screen. Um, say what? Made sure ... yup I did save changes to my .xinitrc. Somehow "exec blackbox" is being interpretted as "exec fvwm." Never mind that that's impossible. As one often discovers: it's only impossible until it happens. But why did it have to happen to me?
Time for desperate measures, OverKill is now in effect. Exited x-windows again and chodded /usr/bin/xfce* to be non-executable. Take that, fetcher!
Nope: now startx crashes back to the console.
Edited my .xinitrc once again, this time for dwm.
Bam: success. dwm says "no way, evil thwarting deamon. I'm not going to stop running, screw you." So now I am running gui programs again. Whew.
So, a statement and a question.
Statement: beware the evil that is fvwm! You can never escape it (well, unless you start using dwm?)!
Question: short of restoring from a month-old backup, how do I get blacbox to not get replaced by fvwm every time?
Thank you.