2 ‐ Configure dwm - Isac-AS/dotfiles GitHub Wiki

Configuring DWM

This page contains the configuring process of DWM as well as other utilities and software.

About fonts

Given a clean install has been performed, some characters can appear as a white box. That is because those fonts are missing. Try installing some fonts like:

sudo pacman -S noto-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-liberation noto-fonts-emoji

For chinese, japanese and korean fonts:

sudo pacman -S noto-fonts-cjk

Autostarting stuff with Lightdm

Looking at /etc/lightdm/Xsession it is where it looks at:

for file in "/etc/profile" "$HOME/.profile" "/etc/xprofile" "$HOME/xprofile"; do
    if [ -f "$file" ]; then
        echo "Loading profile from $file";
        . "$file"
    fi
done

And the last lines:

# Run user xsession shell script
script="$HOME/.xsession"
if [ -x "$script" -a ! -d "$script" ]; then
    echo "Loading xsession script $script"
    . "$script"
fi

echo "X session wrapper complete, running session $@"

exec $@

It is clear that lightdm will run both ~/.xprofile and ~/.xsession. This files can be created to run personal startups scripts. For example, to change the background append the following:

~/.fehbg &

Where ~/.fehbg:

#!/bin/sh
feh --no-fehbg --bg-fill 'path/to/image'

(Make sure feh is installed pacman -S feh).

Configuring DWM

The configuration is done in the ~/.config/dwm/config.h file. There is not much to say about it, just read the code, this header file really is straight forward.

Patching

Patching can fail. Go to the dwm patches page and download the ones you want.

  1. After downloading the patch, run:
patch -p1 < /path/to/patch
  1. If the automatic patching was successfull, recompile the changes:
make # To detect errors
sudo make install # To make the installation
  1. To view the changes, log out and back in to restart the Xsession. (If default bindings were not changed, do CTRL + SHIFT + Q)

Manual patching

Sometimes, the automatic patching might fail. The likelihood of this happening increases with the amount of patches added.

When this happens, a .rej file created. Take a look inside, it will tell which lines could not be modified. Lines to append will have a "+" at the start of the line and lines to be deleted, a "-". Now it is your turn to find where the lines are supposed to go and which ones to remove in the pertinent file. Example:

The patch command shows an error and dwm.c.rej is created. Its contents:

--- dwm.c
+++ dwm.c
@@ -1222,6 +1340,12 @@ maprequest(XEvent *e)
 	static XWindowAttributes wa;
 	XMapRequestEvent *ev = &e->xmaprequest;
 
+	Client *i;
+	if (showsystray && (i = wintosystrayicon(ev->window))) {
+		sendevent(i->win, netatom[Xembed], StructureNotifyMask, CurrentTime, XEMBED_WINDOW_ACTIVATE, 0, systray->win, XEMBED_EMBEDDED_VERSION);
+		updatesystray(1);
+	}
+
 	if (!XGetWindowAttributes(dpy, ev->window, &wa))
 		return;
 	if (wa.override_redirect)

What to do now? Open dwm.c go to the line 1222 and look around for the lines that appear before and after the 6 "+" lines shown in the section. After locating XMapRequestEvent *ev = &e->xmaprequest; and if (!XGetWindowAttributes(dpy, ev->window, &wa)), simply add the new lines in between.

Patches will affect the config.def.h file. This additions must be moved into config.h. Diff both files to see what is new in config.def.h and yank or modify it in config.h. This is necessary as some new variables can be declared in the header file (depends on the patch).

Alpha

For patches like alpha to work, a compositor is needed.

sudo pacman -S picom

Run it in your autostart file. In this case, add the following line to ~/.xprofile or ~/.xsession:

picom &

Patches

Status bar

There are multiple ways to configure what is shown in the status bar: by using a suckless tool called slstatus, by running a script that changes the name of the X root window, o by using a patch called setstatus.

These methods involve adding something to ~/.xprofile. If your final build will have multiple window managers, it is recommended to install the autostart patch and run dwm-specific things from there.

slstatus

slstatus is easy to configure and use. Install it by:

git clone git://git.suckless.org/slstatus ~/.config/slstatus
cd ~/.config/slstatus && sudo make install

To run it, add the following line to the ~/.xprofile file.

slstatus &

The configuration of what is shown is done in the ~/.config/slstatus/config.h file. For example, to display CPU, RAM and date, the argument struct can be populated this way:

static const struct arg args[] = {
    /*function format               argument */
    { cpu_perc, " \uf4bc %s%% | ",    NULL },
    { ram_perc, "\ue266 %s%% - ",     NULL },
    { ram_used, "%s | ",              NULL },
    { datetime, "%s ", "%d/%m/%Y | %H:%M:%S" },
}

Additionally, if you want to do something else, like showing the number of pending updates, you can add a custom command:

static const struct arg args[] = {
    /*function format               argument */
    { run_command, " %s updates |",    "{ timeout 20 checkupdates 2>/dev/null || true; } | wc -l" },
    { cpu_perc, " \uf4bc %s%% | ",    NULL },
    { ram_perc, "\ue266 %s%% - ",     NULL },
    { ram_used, "%s | ",              NULL },
    { datetime, "%s ", "%d/%m/%Y | %H:%M:%S" },
}

Though in this case you might not want to check for updates every second. For that I took inspiration from this post. And will implement the cron job.

xsetroot way

The status bar is stored in the WM_NAME X11 property of the root window, which is managed by dwm. To change this name, simply run:

xsetroot -name "string"

In order to make this status bar show information periodically, the general practice is to create a script that autostarts and performs the refresh in a while loop. For example, inspired from siduck:

#!/bin/sh

interval=0

pkg_updates() {
    updates=$({ timeout 20 checkupdates 2>/dev/null || true; } | wc -l)
    printf "$updates"" updates"
}

cpu() {
    cpu_val=$(grep -o "^[^ ]*" /proc/loadavg)
    printf "CPU "
    printf "$cpu_val"
}

mem() {
    used_mem=$(free -h | awk '/^Mem/ { print $3 }' | sed s/i//g)
    printf "MEM "
    printf "$date_val"
}

date_clock() {
    date_val=$(date "+%d/%m/%Y | %H:%M:%S")
    printf "$date_val"
}

while true; do
    # Check for package updates every hour
    [ $interval = 0 ] || [ $(($interval % 3600)) = 0 ] && updates=$(pkg_updates)
    interval=$((interval + 1))

    sleep 1 && xsetroot -name "| $updates | $(cpu) | $(mem) | $(date_clock)"

Now simply add the following line to the .xprofile file mentioned above.

/path/to/script &

# for example:
~/.config/dwm/script_name.extension &

setstatus way

There is a patch called setstatus that replaces xsetroot. The status will be modified with:

dwm -s "new_status"

st

The same philosophy applies to the simple terminal. Simply patch it. I just added scroll and alpha. Not much to comment.

dmenu

Patches: