Martin Bauer
a2ed74093a
The role ran no window manager on the theory that Firefox is the only X client and --kiosk makes it full-screen by itself. It doesn't: --kiosk *asks* to be full-screen over EWMH, and with no WM running nobody answers. Firefox kept its default window size in the top-left corner - on musicdolphin's 1920x1080 monitor, a 1280x972 window with black bands down the right edge and along the bottom, which looks exactly like an overscan problem and isn't one. Openbox answers the request and does nothing else. pi_kiosk_mode=debug then turns the attached screen into something workable: Firefox as an ordinary window that is not relaunched when you close it, a visible pointer, Openbox as the session leader with a root menu offering a terminal, and xterm, x11-utils and mesa-utils installed. musicdolphin is set to debug for now. The templates notify the getty handler, so a mode switch restarts the session on its own - Xorg lives in that unit's cgroup. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2.7 KiB
pi_kiosk
Turns a Pi with a monitor attached into a full-screen Firefox display: an autologin
console user runs startx, whose .xinitrc starts Openbox and then Firefox pointed at
pi_kiosk_url, relaunching it if it ever exits. If X itself crashes, .bash_profile
restarts it.
Vars:
pi_kiosk_user(defaultkiosk) - the account that autologs into tty1.pi_kiosk_url(defaulthttp://localhost:8080) - what Firefox shows.pi_kiosk_mode(defaultkiosk) -kioskordebug, see below.
Meant to run alongside pi_musicmouse on the same host when it's serving the page
locally (the default pi_kiosk_url), gated in mediapis.yml by mediapi_has_monitor.
Why there is a window manager
This role used to run no WM at all, on the theory that Firefox is the only X client and
--kiosk makes it full-screen by itself. It doesn't. --kiosk asks to be
full-screen, over EWMH, and with no window manager running there is nobody to answer:
Firefox falls back to its default window size in the top-left corner. On the 1920x1080
monitor on musicdolphin that came out as a 1280x972 window with black bands down the
right edge and along the bottom - looking for all the world like an overscan problem,
which it is not. Openbox answers the request and otherwise stays out of the way.
Debug mode
pi_kiosk_mode: debug turns the device's own screen into something you can work on:
- Firefox runs as an ordinary window with its chrome, so the URL bar and devtools are reachable, and it is not relaunched when you close it.
- The pointer is visible (no
-nocursor, nounclutter). - Openbox is the session leader. Right-click the desktop for a menu with a terminal, both ways of opening the page again, and "End this X session", which drops back to the autologin loop and starts a fresh one.
xterm,x11-utilsandmesa-utilsget installed, soxwininfo,xprop,glxinfoandglxgearsare on the device. (The menu's Terminal entry runsx-terminal-emulator, which on the Pi OS image iszutty, not the xterm we install - both work; xterm is the fallback if the alternatives link ever points somewhere that doesn't.)
Switch a host over in host_vars, or for one run:
just run mediapis.yml musicdolphin -e pi_kiosk_mode=debug
just run mediapis.yml musicdolphin -e pi_kiosk_mode=kiosk
Either way the session restarts itself: the templates notify the getty handler, and
restarting getty@tty1 takes X down with it because Xorg lives in that unit's cgroup.
Going back to kiosk does not uninstall the debug packages; they are small and inert.
niri was considered instead of Openbox, but isn't packaged for Debian Bookworm yet (no
official apt package, only third-party .debs or a from-source Rust build) - revisit
once it is.