[SOLVED] Bash script not running properly on XFCE4 startup

BridgeTheMasterBuilder · 07-29-2014, 04:48 PM

I wrote a bash script that opens an instance of xfce4-terminal fullscreened with no borders or menus in Workspace 4 and am having issues getting it to run cleanly when XFCE starts. I've discovered that the issue has to do with whether it is run from a terminal or not, at least, whether the "Run in terminal" option is checked in xfrun4. If I call the script from a terminal emulator or if I use Alt+F2 to run it with the aforementioned option checked it works as intended however if it is run "outside of a terminal" it instead opens a fullscreen terminal instance in the current workstation. Since xfrun4 doesn't seem to accept command-line arguments I can't call it in the script without it being obtrusive. What exactly does xfrun4 do when the "Run in terminal" option is checked? Because I haven't been able to find a way to emulate the behavior.

Here's the script:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

xfce4-terminal -T="fssterm" --fullscreen --hide-menubar --hide-borders --hide-toolbars
wmctrl -r "fssterm" -t 3

Thanks in advance.

evo2 · 07-29-2014, 09:10 PM

Hi,

it looks to me like the wmctrl line won't be run until the terminal exits. So I think you need to run the terminal in the background. Eg

Code:

!/bin/bash

xfce4-terminal -T="fssterm" --fullscreen --hide-menubar --hide-borders --hide-toolbars &
wmctrl -r "fssterm" -t 3

HTH,

Evo2.

BridgeTheMasterBuilder · 07-30-2014, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by evo2

it looks to me like the wmctrl line won't be run until the terminal exits.

No, that's not it, because xfce4-terminal doesn't depend on the parent shell like other terminal emulators I tested. Running an instance of xfce4-terminal just brings you back to the prompt. That being said, I tried your method anyway and it didn't cause the script to behave any differently on startup, though it did break its normal functionality (when it's called from a terminal.)

Incidentally I have also tried running bash -c "fssterm; exit 0" on startup instead which seems like it should work but it doesn't for some reason. It does exactly what fssterm does on its own - inside a terminal it works and outside it doesn't.

EDIT: Success! I got it to work by creating a script called fssterm-exec that simply runs fssterm from another instance of xfce4-terminal (via the -x option.) Admittedly not a very elegant solution, but at least it works (bear in mind I did try to nest the fssterm code within a call to xfce4-terminal with the -x option in the main script so as to avoid having two scripts but it didn't work.)