0-raspberry-pi-problem.md

I'm trying to get Kodi running on a Raspberry Pi 3B with NixOS. For some reason XServer will not start properly.

Below you can see a gist of the configuration, the boot log and a systemctl status to attempt to debug the issue.

1-xserver-configuration.nix

{ config, pkgs, lib, ... }:
{
   services.xserver = {
    enable = true;
    desktopManager.kodi.enable = true;
    displayManager.autoLogin = {
      enable = true;
      user = "kodi";
    };
  };

  users.users.kodi = {
      isNormalUser = true;
  };

  networking = {
    firewall = {
      allowedTCPPorts = [ 8080 ];
      allowedUDPPorts = [ 8080 ];
    };
  };
}

2-xserver-boot.log

[ OK ] Stopped X11 Server.
       Starting X11 Server...
[ OK ] Started X11 Server.
[ OK ] Stopped X11 Server.
       Starting X11 Server.
[ OK ] Started X11 Server.
[ OK ] Stopped X11 Server.
[FAILED] Failed to start X11 Server.
See 'systemctl status display-manager.service' for details.

3-display-manager.service

[ixxie@nixos:~]$ sudo systemctl status display-manager.service
● display-manager.service - X11 Server
     Loaded: loaded (/nix/store/83ddx1v8m5073sqkh796h3wf6dz3h0i1-unit-display-manager.service/display-manager.service; linked; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2021-03-07 17:53:56 UTC; 21s ago
    Process: 827 ExecStartPre=/nix/store/n2npp5kqjld4j9i4f0d2ak1gjl8m53mf-unit-script-display-manager-pre-start/bin/display-manager-pre-start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Process: 829 ExecStart=/nix/store/9n22y66i6nf5mn8nr129lb0bic95j84d-unit-script-display-manager-start/bin/display-manager-start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Main PID: 829 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
         IP: 0B in, 0B out
        CPU: 377ms

Mar 07 17:53:56 nixos systemd[1]: display-manager.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 3.
Mar 07 17:53:56 nixos systemd[1]: Stopped X11 Server.
Mar 07 17:53:56 nixos systemd[1]: display-manager.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Mar 07 17:53:56 nixos systemd[1]: display-manager.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Mar 07 17:53:56 nixos systemd[1]: Failed to start X11 Server.
Mar 07 17:53:56 nixos systemd[1]: display-manager.service: Triggering OnFailure= dependencies.
Mar 07 17:53:56 nixos systemd[1]: display-manager.service: Failed to enqueue OnFailure= job, ignoring: Unit plymouth-quit.service not found.

4-wayland-attempt.md

In the wiki article about Kodi (https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Kodi) I found an approach to running Kodi with Wayland; with this approach boot seems to hang in a different way.

5-wayland-configuration.nix

{ config, pkgs, lib, ... }:
{
  services.cage = {
    enable = true;
    user = "kodi";
    program = "${pkgs.kodi-wayland}/bin/kodi-standalone";
  };
 
  users.users.kodi = {
      isNormalUser = true;
  };
  
  networking = {
    firewall = {
      allowedTCPPorts = [ 8080 ];
      allowedUDPPorts = [ 8080 ];
    };
  };
}

6-wayland-boot.log

[ OK ] Creater slice user-1002.slice.
       Starting User Runtime Directory /run/user/1002...
[ OK ] Finished User Runtime Directory /run/user/1002.
       Starting User Manager for UID 1002...
[ OK ] Started User Manager for UID 1002.
[ OK ] Started Session c1 of user Kodi.
       Starting Authorization Manager...
[ OK ] Started Authorization Manager.

7-raspberry-pi-config.nix

{ config, pkgs, lib, ... }:
{
  boot = {
    loader = {
      grub.enable = false;
      generic-extlinux-compatible.enable = true;
    };
    kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_rpi3;
    initrd.includeDefaultModules = false;
    kernelParams = ["cma=32M"];
  };
 
 
  fileSystems = {
    "/" = {
      device = "/dev/disk/by-label/NIXOS_SD";
      fsType = "ext4";
    };
  };
    
  swapDevices = [ { device = "/swapfile"; size = 1024; } ];
}