Re: starting Idesk automatically in IceWM on Lenny

[Lisi <lisi.reisz@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday 13 October 2009 10:43:21 Tim Clewlow wrote:
> You can rearrange the order in which things are started in your
> .xsession file, ie you dont have to start the window manager last.
[snip]
> Basically, when the script finishes, X will close - so dont let the
> script finish - thats what the long sleeping loop at the end is for.
> I'm guessing your .xsession should look something like:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults &
> icewm &
> sleep 1
> <other apps> &
> idesk &
>
> while [ 1 ] ; do
> sleep 1000d
> done
>
>
> The line 'sleep 1' is intended to be a little delay to give icewm
> time to start up before attempting to run idesk. It may not actually
> be necessary, or it may be too small a delay, it all depends on how
> idesk determines if icewm is running, ie it may look for a lock file
> created really quickly by icewm, or it may look for a process that
> may take some time to appear.

Thanks for this and for the lucid explanation.  Sadly, it didn't work any 
better than the others.  Differently, but not better.  IceWM started to open, 
then x crashed out.  I also tried various changes to see if they would help.  
E.g., as you suggested I changed the sleep time.  But I also commented out 
and commented back in the xrdb line.  It made no difference which I did.

So I am left with the best being to put startx in ~/.bash_profile and start 
idesk from the command line - but that is not acceptable.

I am beginning to think that either it is simply not doable, or it is doable - 
but not by me. :-(

Lisi