Re: starting Idesk automatically in IceWM on Lenny

["Tim Clewlow" <tim@clewlow.org>]

> On Wednesday 14 October 2009 00:34:57 Tim Clewlow wrote:
>> > 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.
> [snip]
>> > I am beginning to think that either it is simply not doable, or
>> it
>> > is doable -
>> > but not by me. :-(
>> I installed icewm and idesk, created a directory ~/.idesktop and
then started X with .xsession containing the following:
>> #!/bin/sh
>> xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults &
>> icewm &
>> idesk &
>> while [ 1 ] ; do
>> sleep 1000d
>> done
>> Idesk seems to start up fine, ie I had icewm running and an icon at
>> the top left that looks kind of like a house with the text
'Idesk'
>> written underneath.
> Thank you very much for trying this out.
> Yes - if you have not created any other icons, that is what you
> should see.
> I, however, still don't. :-(  There is obviously something else
> either running
> or not running as it ought to do.
> Before trying this one, I did "rm .bash_profile" so that that
would
> not be
> muddying the waters.  I then did exactly as you had done.  X
failed
> to start.
> So I added startx to your script.  Not surprisingly, that made no
difference.
> So I recreated .bash_profile and put startx in it.
> That gave me a functional system - but no desktop.  Just a nasty
hashed
> greying out grid.  Etc.  I have spent quite some time googling,
and
> trying
> things out on my test system, including via the configuration
files.
>  We know
> that this works for you, and that it works for me if I start idesk
manually.
> About the only thing I can think of to try is starting X
> differently.  But
> how?
> You have done so much already, but I would be very grateful if you
could tell
> me how you start X on your system.
> Lisi

It sounds like your system is not using the xsession method of
managing an X session, which means it is using the native xinit
method. That's ok, and just as easy to work with. First check if you
have a file called .xinitrc in your home directory, if it exists,
rename it to .xinitrc.sav to move it out the way for a bit (so you
can always rename it back later if you want) with:

    mv ~/.xinitrc ~/.xinitrc.sav

Now create a brand new .xinitrc file in your home directory, it will
be exactly the same as the .xsession file you made earlier, so if
you still have the .xsession file just do:

    cp ~/.xsession ~/.xinitrc

Or if you need to create, or want to check, the new .xinitrc file
then it should contain:

#!/bin/sh
xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults &
icewm &
idesk &
while [ 1 ] ; do
sleep 1000d
done

As long as no-one has modified the X startup scripts (which is very
unlikely for most systems), this should work, well, hopefully :-)

Also, I think there is a better way to start X than using a bashrc
file - but we'll get to that later, first we need to get X starting
up the way you want it.

Cheers Tim.