restoring startx behavior after upgrading to xorg-server 1.16

Arch Linux has been imposing an increasing maintenance toll as of late. Many of the changes now feel more like creating solutions so people have problems to work out.

Anyway, after upgrading to xorg-server 1.16, startx stops working, with error messages “cannot open virtual console” and “systemd-logind: failed to get session“. To restore old startx behavior, create a file “/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config” with content

allowed_users = anybody
needs_root_rights = yes


See the man page of “Xwrapper.config” for more information