Cannot open virtual console 7 (Permission Denied) when trying to start X on Gentoo

Question

When I try to start X with i3 by typing startx /usr/bin/i3 I get the following error message: (EE) xf86OpenConsole: Cannot open virtual console 7 (Permission denied)

Launching startx as root or after chowning /dev/tty7 solves it (expect for input not working, not even switching terminals), but I don`t think that is the proper way to do that.

Sway and Weston work flawlessly why won`t X do so?

Solution

startx works fine on my system (Fedora). However, one outdated page on the Gentoo Wiki mentions a different way to run it:

startx /usr/bin/i3 -- vt1

1 is the number of the "terminal" you are logged in on. If you are not on terminal 1, then adjust the command accordingly.

Apparently this fixed the Permission denied error, and allowed X to start.

I don't understand why startx would need this to be passed explicitly. I don't understand how Gentoo could be doing anything differently to Fedora here. Oh well. At least it should stop startx / Xorg from trying to open tty7. That was definitely not the modern way to do things, and it was not working for you.

Comments

[Admin]

have you somehow compiled Xorg without support for logind? Might be tagged as systemd support, not logind specifically. Wiki doesn't seem to show a USE flag for it though.

[Admin]

I did not no that when I log into a terminal the corresponding /dev/tty* device becomes owned by my user. Now X starts properly. (expect for the input, but I guess for that I have to ask a new question)

[Admin]

new question sounds good, to provide all your information about the input devices (error messages? log doesn't mention any input devices at all?). Remember to mention how well Weston worked in comparison. I would also be interested in loginctl seat-status seat0. Successful output from loginctl seat-status is long, but you can at least say if it list any input devices or not.

[Admin]

I just had to install x11-drivers/xf86-input-edev for the input, now i3 works perfectly.

[Admin]

Sorry for not saying this earlier: Users have asked me to provide more feedback. I would upvote this question, except I don't like to upvote them when they don't include any version numbers. On other OS's, I often accept the overall OS version number. But that's not possible since Gentoo is a rolling release. No pressure, but to use this as an example, if you want my upvote you would include the version of Xorg package that had this problem. Ideally also the version of the Weston or Sway package that worked.