I'm in a setup (20.04) that is basically headless (a solaris zone, but we could probably consider it analogous to any server sort of setup), and as such, I don't have any graphical environment installed already.

When I log in (via SSH or zlogin), my $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR and friends are not set. I was wondering, what is the minimum setup I need to perform, to have these managed automatically by the system? I have read that the directories should be managed by PAM's systemd module, and so have installed libpam-systemd, to no avail.

There's plenty online regarding the setup of these directories, but much relates to graphical environments or sudo for example, where the root cause is different.

Is there a package I need to install, or some minimum configuration to perform, to ensure that the XDG directories are set up and exported in the environment automatically, without resorting to installing some other large set of software (e.g. X) that will have it set up as a side effect, and without writing a script manually?

Thanks