Can't enter desktop mode (plasma5 / X11)

[schradert]

My Jovian configuration for Steam Deck OLED:

jovian.decky-loader.enable = true;
jovian.devices.steamdeck = {
  enable = true;
  autoUpdate = true;
  enableGyroDsuService = true;
};
jovian.steam = {
  enable = true;
  autoStart = true;
  desktopSession = "plasma";
  user = "tristan";
};
services.xserver.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;

Selecting "Switch to Desktop" seems to just reboot another gamescope-session as if I had set jovian.steam.desktopSession = "gamescope-wayland".

[schradert]

A few more useful details:

1. Jovian-NixOS flake is pinned to git rev: 477d11f
2. nixpkgs is pinned to git rev: 06cf0e1da4208d3766d898b7fdab6513366d45b9

I haven't tried changing these versions yet, but I will once I have time. I don't really know where to look to debug this, so any direction would be greatly appreciated.

[K900]

Is there anything in journalctl that would suggest what is happening?

[schradert]

Maybe this is related: plymouth quit fails here during jovian-greeter service with No such file or directory: 'plymouth', which seems odd to me given it was added to the jovian-greeter executable path here

[K900]

No, that's fine. Anything else?

[schradert]

Sorry I have been traveling, which was probably not the best time to tinker :) Nothing seems obvious to me, but I don't know enough to say. Here's the journalctl log from when I triggered Switch to Desktop. Frankly I am facing several errors right now, not just the one in question, but thought I'd tackle one at a time, unless you can tell something is obviously wacky and correctable from these logs.

[K900]

This looks like something in Plasma is failing to start. Can you check systemctl --user --failed when that happens?

[schradert]

This looks like something in Plasma is failing to start. Can you check systemctl --user --failed when that happens?

Nothing

[K900]

That is very strange. Are you using 24.05 or unstable? Can you try Plasma 6 instead of 5?

[schradert]

Unstable. It looks like Plasma 6 worked! Here's the journalctl log for this successful switch if you are curious to compare. I'm still having several issues with sound and bluetooth, but at least I can enter desktop mode now. I'll open separate issues for those.

[samueldr]

Sorry I have been traveling, which was probably not the best time to tinker :) Nothing seems obvious to me, but I don't know enough to say. Here's the journalctl log from when I triggered Switch to Desktop. Frankly I am facing several errors right now, not just the one in question, but thought I'd tackle one at a time, unless you can tell something is obviously wacky and correctable from these logs.

Looking through that log, the important part I guess is:

Oct 04 14:57:22 systeamadeck jovian-session[8071]: /usr/bin/env: ‘startx’: No such file or directory

jovian-session being the identifier used for the logs coming from our greetd greeter; so it would be something started by it that fails in this way.

And indeed our session starts X with startx:

• Jovian-NixOS/pkgs/jovian-greeter/greeter.py

  Line 60 in b0d86a6

  return [ 'startx', '/usr/bin/env' ] + command

(Which I don't know if it is idiomatically appropriate for a greetd greeter...)

And I'm wondering if it's related to some of the work in NixOS where a lot of the startx semantics got shuffled around recently by people using Wayland with the goal of having no X11 presence at all on their system.

So the questions are:

• is there an incomplete assumption for X11 sessions × our greeter?
• is there some stronger linkage between startx and the other DMs / greeters in Nixpkgs?
• or is it that NixOS X-based sessions may not properly expose requirements?

[samueldr]

(I've filed it as waiting on further information, but anyone's information here is good; reproducing and checking for what I said previously)

[bendlas]

I didn't dig into xstart/xsessions env question, just an observation:

I had the same problem (desktop not starting with plasma5). After switching to plasma6, the desktop is starting with jovian.steam.desktopSession = "plasma";, but not with jovian.steam.desktopSession = "plasma-x11";.