Launching Cygwin/X in background with no clients

[Mark Hansen]

On 2/2/2015 9:12 PM, Jim Garrison wrote:
> On 2/2/2015 5:21 PM, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
>>  On Mon, 2015-02-02 at 16:52 -0800, Jim Garrison wrote:
>>>  I updated Cygwin (which pulled in a bunch of Cygwin-X updates) and
>>>  now startxwin no longer works.  According to the log (below) it starts
>>>  the XServer successfully but then shuts down.
>>>
>>>  My .startxwinrc is an empty (zero-length) file to prevent automatic
>>>  launching of the default clients, which I don't need.
>>
>>  http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html#q-startxwinrc-exit
>
> Thanks.
>
> I want to start an X server in the background, with no visible
> clients, if it's not already running, whenever I launch a mintty
> session. X should continue to run even if the mintty session that
> started it is closed.
>
> Currently I have the following in my .bash_profile
>
>     ps -ef|grep -q XWin || nohup setsid startxwin 2>startxwin.log&
>
> This now works again after adding "exec sleep infinity" in
> .startxwinrc, but I can't help feel my whole approach is a bad hack.
> Both nohup and setsid seem to be required. Without setsid the mintty
> will hang if I attempt to close it with exit or ^D, and without nohup
> the X server terminates whenever the first mintty session is closed.
>
> Is there a cleaner way to accomplish this objective?
>

Are you willing to have the X Server launch when you log into windows and just keep it
running? This is what I do and I find it very useful. I launch the X server when I log
in using a shortcut with the following target:

   C:\Apps\cygwin\bin\run.exe /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c "/usr/bin/startxwin.exe -- -emulate3buttons 100 -multiwindow -clipboard 
-swcursor"

I then place this shortcut into the Startup folder of my Start menu.

I hope this helps.

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