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    Install And Setup swaylock-effects On Ubuntu

    Posted on 4 mins

    Sysadmin

    Table of Contents

    Summary

    To make my setup a little more enjoyable I like to make it look more pleasing to the eye. With this comes trying different methods to install software that accomplishes this.

    With that being said I like to install software that adds more effects that aren’t necessarily the defaults. I found something called swaylock-effects. Which is a fork of the swaywm/swaylock Github repository.

    It took a little while to install this because there is no Ubuntu package. But, with a little dependancy hell I was able to compile it and it works really well for not being updated for 4 years.

    Dependencies

    Needed to install the following build tools because they weren’t already installed.

    Needed to install the following packages for setup.

    On Ubuntu these dependencies can be installed using the following command. Please let me know if there is anything missing from the command.

    sudo apt install -y libwayland-dev wayland-protocols \
    libxkbcommon-dev scdoc libcairo2-dev libgdk-pixbug2.0-dev

    Install

    Need to build it now that the dependencies are installed. This is done using the meson command.

    meson build

    Below is the output from the command.

    The Meson build system
Version: 1.3.2
Source dir: /home/tloftus/Documents/thirdparty/swaylock-effects
Build dir: /home/tloftus/Documents/thirdparty/swaylock-effects/build
Build type: native build
Project name: swaylock
Project version: 1.6-4
C compiler for the host machine: cc (gcc 13.2.0 "cc (Ubuntu 13.2.0-23ubuntu4) 13.2.0")
C linker for the host machine: cc ld.bfd 2.42
Host machine cpu family: x86_64
Host machine cpu: x86_64
Compiler for C supports arguments -mtune=native: YES 
Found pkg-config: YES (/usr/bin/pkg-config) 1.8.1
Run-time dependency wayland-client found: YES 1.22.0
Run-time dependency wayland-protocols found: YES 1.34
Run-time dependency xkbcommon found: YES 1.6.0
Run-time dependency cairo found: YES 1.18.0
Run-time dependency gdk-pixbuf-2.0 found: YES 2.42.10
Run-time dependency bash-completion found: YES 2.11
Found CMake: /usr/bin/cmake (3.28.3)
Run-time dependency fish found: NO (tried pkgconfig and cmake)
Library pam found: NO
Library crypt found: YES
Library m found: YES
Library rt found: YES
Library dl found: YES
Program git found: YES (/usr/bin/git)
Program scdoc found: YES (/usr/bin/scdoc)
Program wayland-scanner found: YES (/usr/bin/wayland-scanner)
WARNING: You should add the boolean check kwarg to the run_command call.
         It currently defaults to false,
         but it will default to true in future releases of meson.
         See also: https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/9300
Configuring config.h using configuration
meson.build:170: WARNING: The swaylock binary must be setuid when compiled without libpam
meson.build:171: WARNING: You must do this manually post-install: chmod a+s /path/to/swaylock
Program sh found: YES (/usr/bin/sh)
Build targets in project: 3
NOTICE: Future-deprecated features used:
 * 0.55.0: {'ExternalProgram.path'}
 * 0.56.0: {'dependency.get_pkgconfig_variable'}

Found ninja-1.11.1 at /usr/bin/ninja
WARNING: Running the setup command as `meson [options]` instead of `meson setup [options]` is ambiguous and deprecated.

    The following command will build and link the libraries.

    ninja -C build

    Below is the output from the command.

    ninja: Entering directory `build'
[37/37] Linking target swaylock

    Time to install the application. This is done using the ninja command.

    sudo ninja -C build install

    The build command takes the updated swaylock binary and puts it into the /usr/local/bin directory and installs the man page.

    ninja: Entering directory `build'
[0/1] Installing files.
Installing swaylock to /usr/local/bin
Installing swaylock.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tloftus/Documents/thirdparty/swaylock-effects/pam/swaylock to /usr/local/etc/pam.d
Installing /home/tloftus/Documents/thirdparty/swaylock-effects/completions/zsh/_swaylock to /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions
Installing /home/tloftus/Documents/thirdparty/swaylock-effects/completions/bash/swaylock to /usr/share/bash-completion/completions
Installing /home/tloftus/Documents/thirdparty/swaylock-effects/completions/fish/swaylock.fish to /usr/local/share/fish/vendor_completions.d

    Ubuntu doesn’t use PAM. So, a SUID needs to be set on swaylock for it to work properly.

    sudo chmod a+s /usr/local/bin/swaylock

    Configuration

    Needed to set the lock variable with the new swaylock configuration. I’m using a lot of the defaults here to add the screenshot, clock, blur effect, and the colors. I updated the ring-color and the key-hl-color for some customization.

    set $lock swaylock \
	--screenshots \
	--clock \
	--indicator \
	--indicator-radius 100 \
	--indicator-thickness 7 \
	--effect-blur 7x5 \
	--effect-vignette 0.5:0.5 \
	--ring-color 00aa00 \
	--key-hl-color 00d500 \
	--line-color 008000 \
	--inside-color 00000088 \
	--separator-color 00000000 \
	--grace 2 \
	--fade-in 0.2

    Then I reload the Sway configuration and we’re good to go. Issued the lock command and it works. Though, it does take it a little time to register fully. If you lock it. You have to let it sit for a little while before it fully takes.