Signal Desktop doesn't start | Missing X server or $DISPLAY

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1

Hi,
I installed Signal Desktop from flathub. It worked fine but since some updates when launched it displays a window asking for allowing plaintext password store ; either options doesn’t work, nothing happens. What can i do ?

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2

The FlatHub packages are provided by others (non Fedora community folks). I’d start by contacting them, perhaps by filing an issue (or looking to see if a similar one has been filed—I had a quick look but didn’t see anything obviously similar to yours):

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3

What system do you use? What desktop environment?

Signal desktop encrypts the chat database now, so you need to save the password in a password store, which is kwallet or the gnome keyring.

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5

for KDE sudo flatpak override --env=SIGNAL_PASSWORD_STORE=kwallet6 org.signal.Signal

for gnome sudo flatpak override --env=SIGNAL_PASSWORD_STORE=gnome-libsecret org.signal.Signal

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6

I don’t remember having to do this myself. Is this not supposed to be the default anyway? Does a user have to set these manually?

7

I use Fedora 41 with KDE Plasma. I have run sudo flatpak override --env=SIGNAL_PASSWORD_STORE=kwallet6 org.signal.Signal and then flatpak run org.signal.Signal
I got this :

Debug: Using password store: kwallet6
Debug: Will run signal with the following arguments: --password-store=kwallet6
Debug: Additionally, user gave: 
[2 zypak-helper] Wait found events, but sd-event found none
Set Windows Application User Model ID (AUMID) { AUMID: 'org.whispersystems.signal-desktop' }
NODE_ENV production
NODE_CONFIG_DIR /app/Signal/resources/app.asar/config
NODE_CONFIG {}
ALLOW_CONFIG_MUTATIONS undefined
HOSTNAME Host-004
NODE_APP_INSTANCE undefined
SUPPRESS_NO_CONFIG_WARNING undefined
SIGNAL_ENABLE_HTTP undefined
userData: /home/alexandre/.var/app/org.signal.Signal/config/Signal
config/start: Did not find user config file (or it was empty), cache is now empty object
config/start: Did not find ephemeral config file (or it was empty), cache is now empty object
making app single instance
LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
xdg-settings
LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
xdg-settings
[2:0412/140255.984142:ERROR:ozone_platform_x11.cc(246)] Missing X server or $DISPLAY
[2:0412/140255.984195:ERROR:env.cc(257)] The platform failed to initialize.  Exiting.
[2:0412/140256.063407:ERROR:node_util.cc(54)] CompileAndCall failed to evaluate electron script (electron/js2c/node_init): script execution has been terminated
[2:0412/140256.065693:ERROR:node_util.cc(54)] CompileAndCall failed to evaluate electron script (electron/js2c/node_init): script execution has been terminated
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Not default still as experimental last time i check and you have to choose plain or envrypted and override and same bow as wayland with overrides

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‘ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT=auto’

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what ?

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You need to set signal platform to use wayland at least that is mentioned on signal github page and use that command with flatpak override auto actually sets default x11 or wayland depends wich using.

On the logs it is seems to be trying yo use x11 and that is missing on Fedora since default is wayland

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I am not sure I follow what you are suggesting.

However, you definitely do not need to force Signal Desktop to use Wayland on Fedora. I use the Signal Desktop 7.50.0 Flatpak on F41 KDE and it happily runs using XWayland. (You can force it to use Wayland and for a while I did, but at some point I was sick of the window opening with tiny dimensions so I ditched the override and went back to X11.)

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i installed and use Signal without any issues on Silverblue, just set the Variable as stated in the first launch message window to use Gnome Keyring.

Perhaps you might want to try to uninstall the app, remove data files and reinstall it to rebuild the database.

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i use silverblue and i dont use signal desktop app, i have used it before but now i have switched to a app called flare Install Flare on Linux | Flathub the app is now really stable and really good initially it was not upto the mark but the dev put time and make it good. now it is on you if you want to use this or not but the app is written in rust and gtk4 naive but the signal app(official) is an electron app.

15

I uninstalled Signal, suppresseed user data and reinstalled. It doesn’t launch at all. When executing in command line i get :

[alexandre@Host-004 ~]$ flatpak run org.signal.Signal

Debug: Using password store: kwallet6
Debug: Will run signal with the following arguments: --password-store=kwallet6
Debug: Additionally, user gave: 
Set Windows Application User Model ID (AUMID) { AUMID: 'org.whispersystems.signal-desktop' }
NODE_ENV production
NODE_CONFIG_DIR /app/Signal/resources/app.asar/config
NODE_CONFIG {}
ALLOW_CONFIG_MUTATIONS undefined
HOSTNAME Host-004
NODE_APP_INSTANCE undefined
SUPPRESS_NO_CONFIG_WARNING undefined
SIGNAL_ENABLE_HTTP undefined
userData: /home/alexandre/.var/app/org.signal.Signal/config/Signal
config/start: Did not find user config file (or it was empty), cache is now empty object
config/start: Did not find ephemeral config file (or it was empty), cache is now empty object
making app single instance
LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
xdg-settings
LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
xdg-settings
[2:0413/213229.746333:ERROR:ozone_platform_x11.cc(246)] Missing X server or $DISPLAY
[2:0413/213229.746383:ERROR:env.cc(257)] The platform failed to initialize.  Exiting.
[2:0413/213229.819370:ERROR:node_util.cc(54)] CompileAndCall failed to evaluate electron script (electron/js2c/node_init): script execution has been terminated
[2:0413/213229.823752:ERROR:node_util.cc(54)] CompileAndCall failed to evaluate electron script (electron/js2c/node_init): script execution has been terminated
17

I upgraded to Fedora 42 and now it works fine.

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