I am trying to run a Plasma session as a different user from bash by running sudo -u $TARGET_USER dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-wayland.

However, when trying to do so, I get an error “Could not create wayland socket”.

My goal is to start a Plasma session as a specified user, wait for the user to log out and continue running the script.

  • Does anyone know how I might be able to fix this error?
  • Do you know of another way to start a Plasma session as a different user and wait for the session to exit?

I also tried to do the same using the sudo --preserve-env --set-home XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/users/$(id -u $TARGET_USER) switches.

When doing so, I get the following messages repeatedly:

No backend specified, automatically choosing drm
kwin_core: Failed to take control of /org/freedesktop/login1/session/_311 session. Maybe another compositor is running?
kwin_wayland_drm: Failed to open drm device at "/dev/dri/card1"
kwin_wayland_drm: No suitable DRM devices have been found

However, logging in to the tty with the $TARGET_USER directly and running dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-wayland works properly as expected.

  • Strit
    2•23 hours ago

    Why not just log in as the user in TTY and then start it?

    I’n not sure I understand the use-case of why it needs a Plasma session to start a script that needs to keep running afterwards. If the script itself does not need a plasma session, then you can just start it as a user service with systemd.